ᐅ Cracks in Plaster and Tiles After Renovation with Power Panels

Hello everyone,

We have just renovated our bathroom and after a few weeks, we have noticed cracks in the plaster and tiles. I would appreciate your assessment and suggestions for how to proceed.

Conditions / Execution:
- Solid construction from 1971
- Old tiles were removed
- Fermacell Powerpanel H2O fixed to existing walls using setting adhesive and 80mm (3 inch) panel screws
- Screws and panel joints impregnated and filled with Uniflott, then surface sanded
- Tiles applied with Knauf Flexkleber Extra adhesive
- Above half of the tiles, plaster primer and roller-applied plaster were applied

The pictures show the current state with the crack positions before plastering.

We hope you can restore our confidence!

Best regards,
Mario and the co-builders

How about sharing some pictures of the cracks?
Presumably, the cracks appeared exactly along the joints of the panels?

Did you tile it yourselves? Did you embed mesh tape in the joints? This is supposed to prevent cracks. I would also suspect that the cracks are occurring at the joints.

Attached is the photo showing the crack progression from the plaster to the tile.
Yes, we tiled it ourselves and apparently did not install any mesh tape there.

To me, the necessary steps seem to be:
- Replace the tile
- Sand down the textured plaster
- Apply crack tape with filler
- Re-skim the entire wall area
- Prime again
- Apply the wall covering

What is your opinion?

Alternative: accept a minor visual imperfection
Has a proper primer been applied under the tile?

We will leave it as is for now until the heating systems and the wood stove are installed, so it doesn’t get too cold.
Since it annoys me, I will correct it in due course.

The airtightness is not an issue. Water can now only come into this room from the upper floor.