A Clean Perspective: Holey Floors!
She was, of course, speaking about her travertine floors. I replied with a serious, sober look and straight delivery: “Quit walking on them.”
Since then, I’ve explained this to many a homeowner uneducated in geology, but nonetheless still perplexed with the perceived problem of peculiar pits presenting themselves in their floors. To put it simply: If you’re going to walk on your floors, you’re going to wear them.
You can no further prevent holes from appearing in travertine then you can prevent clouds from appearing in the sky. It’s nature; it’s gonna happen.
Now … in some parts of the world you get very few clouds, and in others it seems like the sun never comes out. It’s the same with travertine floors; some will have itty-bitty holes and others will have craters.
I hear a lot of talk about the grading of travertine. It’s usually from an end user who bought the low grade of the stone (not knowing there was a difference) and ended up being educated by the seller.
Look, I sat on the board of the Marble Institute of America for five years. I know and eat with regularly (not just name-dropping here) several members of committees and boards of the most-influential associations, societies and institutes in the floor industry, and I’ve YET to see any published “official” documentation about grades of travertine.
A few unofficial classification systems from some distributors offer three grades, the definitions of which most tile sellers and end users never see until a problem arises. The terms vary, depending on supplier, but generally there is a first grade (or Premium or sometimes a luxurious Italian title), a Mid-grade (with an impressive-sounding European name) and a third, or commercial, grade.
The designation of the third grade as commercial seems to be standard in the trade. Why anyone would specify a third-grade travertine in any commercial application is beyond my thinking capacity, but it does keep my family fed.
Generic descriptions of each classification are as follows:
Premium travertine (aka first grade) – These tiles/slabs are double-filled (first by machine, then by hand). They are selected to have consistent coloring throughout the crates, and the only limitation about holes (again this varies by producer) is either “no large holes” or “no holes/fill all the way through each tile.” They will also specify no chipped or cracked edges, and that the tiles/slabs be the same thickness throughout.