While renovating my little house here in Andalucía, Spain…
…I ordered a pallet of travertine floor tile from a dealer about 3 hours away from the house, in Malaga. When the order arrived, they telephoned me that I could pick it up. I took my husband’s SUV and off I went.
When I pulled up to the pick-up area, with the nice cherry red SUV, the men who worked at the tile center began to laugh.
I couldn’t see what was so funny…
They brought out the pallet of floor tiles on a small tractor with a little fork lift on the front. I took a look and sized up the number of boxes and the space in the back of the SUV. It will fit nicely! I thought to myself as I paid the balance of the order and began to untwine the tape that held the boxes together. The men continued laughing until finally one of them came up to me and said, “Señora, Are you planning to take the tiles in THAT vehicle?”
“Si,” I replied. “It won’t even be a quarter full!”
“But the weight of all the boxes on the palette is more than a ton. Not a figurative ton but a REAL TON OF WEIGHT. I think you’ll break the suspension on the vehicle before you even leave the warehouse!”
And he was right. I had not even considered the weight. It all looked so compact, hundreds of travertine tiles in their boxes bound with cellophane and heavy plastic straps, yet I could barely pick up one box.
So, with some help from the laughing men, we loaded a few boxes and I made several trips.
The moral to the story: have a truck deliver your travertine tile. Remember: it’s made of STONE!
*The Weight of Travertine Tile is about 1,950 lbs. per Pallet of 360 square feet.
Don’t forget to calculate that travertine tile, although made of stone, does break more than you think.
You should count on 2% -10% breakage for each shipment or order.
This percentage includes tiles with hairline cracks, chipped edges and scratched surfaces. Don’t despair. Partially broken, cracked or scratched travertine flooring can still be used since cutting travertine tiles will be required to fit corners, crevices or odd shaped spaces that would otherwise mean cutting a whole tile.
Travertine Tile Uses
Travertine is used primarily in residential homes for floor tile, but also for cladding on buildings, bathroom showers, kitchen backsplashes and countertops, indoor and outdoor walls, paving patios and making garden paths. It’s a versatile tile!
