The heater was just our air conditioning unit - it has a heater function as well. Since that first fissure, there have been several more aftershocks as the cracks either spread or become wider. Like I said, this is a problem that others in the building have apparently had as well - shoddy workmanship at the beginning, I guess. Some tiles at the other end of the living room have been uneven for ages - but not actually separated. It’s a problem I’ve feared would be coming for a long while, and now it’s here.
I hope to god it’s not water. For what it’s worth, this isn’t particularly near the pipes in the bathrooms or the kitchen or the balcony. But in my ignorance, I’m not sure how pipes are laid out in apartments.
We’re still in the stages of talking to different people to get an idea of what this is going to involve. I’m a little confused about the widely predicted timespans here! The main guy we’ve talked to said they’d have to remove all the tiles and prep the underlying concrete before putting on the new flooring, but my wife didn’t ask him about a timespan.
Logically to me laminate (lino? Internet searches tell me they’re not the same, but I’m not sure if the differences are significant enough for me to figure out) would seem better than tile, because if there’s further shifting, the laminate would respond better. And this being Taiwan, there will be further shifting. But, a) my logic may be way off, and b) I’m not sure what kind of price differential there is.