Have you ever had to buy tiles for your kitchen or bathroom floor? Then, you have heard a rule of thumb that you need to buy 15% more tiles if you are planning to install them diagonally. Does it really make sense? Your floor area is constant. All you need is to measure your floor area and divide by the area of one tile. This gives you the amount of tiles you will need. It shouldn't matter how you position them, they still should sum up to the area of your floor. Right?
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4 comments:
OK, I'll take a crack at it... the tiles do take the same amount of area whether turned on their side or diagonal. The difference in total usage is because more tiles need to be cut if you put them on the diagonal, and with each cut is a higher probability of breakage. Also, the part of the tile not used when cut may be useful elsewhere, or may just be wasted.
In theory, if laying tiles parallel to the walls, it is possible to have no waste at all. Imaging a 12 feet by 12 feet room, and you are using 12 inch square tiles. You could use exactly 144 tiles, and have no waste. However, in laying on a diagonal, it is impossible to have no waste.
It is impossible to trick you, guys!
Will come up with something ultimately hard tomorrow. Kim gets to the second place, splitting it with Kalonni that we have not heard from for a while now....
No because there is always going to be halves of a tile left.
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