Sloping floors and tiles that crack in a line

One cracked tile can come from an impact or a flooring issue. A crack that carries on across the grout into several tiles can follow a crack in the concrete below.

Tiles that rise into a low ridge, sometimes with a bang, are being squeezed. That can be the slab bending. It can also be tile laid tight with no room to expand in the heat.

A slope is easier to feel than to see. Check with a long level or a marble and note where the low side is: toward an outside wall, or toward the middle of a room.

A company or engineer maps the floor with a digital level, taking a height reading every few feet and writing the numbers on a plan of the house. The result looks like a contour map. It shows which way the slab has tilted and by how much, and it gives a baseline to compare against later. Ask for a copy.

For a slab edge that has dropped, the proposal is usually piers under the footing. For a dip in the middle of a floor it is more often lifting from above, by pumping expanding foam or cement grout through small drilled holes. Tile and flooring are put right afterward and are often priced separately. Each method is described in the repair methods guide.