Precautions for handmade terracotta

Being handmade terracotta, according to traditional ancient techniques, manual handling during the production of pieces entails that they undergo some small chipping - inevitable, when also considering their transport on-site. This chipping which, however, does not in any way damage the final effect of the floor, is also caused by the "vitrification" of our pieces, given the very high temperatures that we fire our bricks at, which makes our product impervious to frost and with low rates of absorption.

Our terracotta flooring can be installed in a traditional manner (semi-dry - "granulated") or glued in as common ceramic tiles. In both cases, the pieces must be tested by immersing them in water for 30 minutes. This operation allows verification of whether or not there are small impurities inside the pieces, which can come to the surface only in this way.
Pieces with impurities, generally 3% of them, will then be used to make cuts, usefully becoming part in the percentage of "scrap", about 8%.

Another very important precaution in the production of handmade terracotta is in mixing the pieces during installation, taking from different packages and not always the same pack well to well mix different shades of colour derived from the firing (characteristic of handmade terracotta).

Finally, we have found that our stucco products are not compatible with Mapei or Kerakoll ready-to-use stuccoes. Particularly, both for indoor heated flooring and outdoors where products tend to feel temperature changes and therefore expand, grouting that is too strong and rigid does not act as a dilatation joint, causing the collapse of the piece near it. It is advisable to always stucco the piece with inert material based cement mortars, lime and cement, or, always the most used, historical roughcast (antique method).