ᐅ Tiling over existing tiles + embedding cables in the floor

Hello forum,

This year I will be moving into a house that I purchased and will partially renovate. There are still tenants living there, so I haven’t yet spoken to any contractors and am gathering information in advance. However, professionals will definitely be involved to carry out the work.

The entire ground floor will be retiled because we simply don’t like the current tiles. The initial plan was to tile over the existing tiles. My in-laws recently had this done, and it worked out great.

Since the electrical wiring is quite old, there are no network cables installed, and no bus system or similar for a smart home, I thought it might make sense to run many of these cables under the floor while it is being renovated anyway.

My actual question is whether this (non-expert) idea makes sense, or if it is completely unrealistic to cut channels into the existing tiles to lay cables before applying the leveling compound and new tiles?

I look forward to any tips or ideas :-)

I had a similar discussion with my heating engineer today regarding the installation of an additional water pipe. He suggested cutting a channel into the old tiles, laying the pipe there, and then installing the new tiles over it. Essentially, this is possible. Whether the amount of work involved is justifiable is probably another question.

SWhof321 schrieb:
I had a similar discussion today with my heating engineer about installing an additional water pipe. He suggested milling a channel into the old tiles, laying the pipe there, and then installing the new tiles on top. So basically, it’s possible. Whether the amount of work involved is reasonable, is probably another question.

Interesting to hear!
Since I will likely need to install quite a few more cables if this is done now, only the ceiling or the floor really come into consideration. If I wanted to run everything inside the walls, hardly any wall would be left due to the number of channels needed.
And since I will be working on the floor anyway and want to leave the ceiling intact, I thought that would be less effort than opening up the entire ceiling.

I also have another option in mind. Upstairs there are knee walls from the roof; if I bring the cables bundled up to the first floor, I could distribute them along the length of the house on both sides above the knee walls. Then I would only need to chase channels in the walls up to the ceiling at the relevant spots and drill through the ceiling.
Somehow, the option through the floor still sounds easier.

Always keep in mind: it is usually easier to access inside a wall or ceiling, plaster it, and be done. Searching for defects under tiles is more intensive and may require breaking the tiles.