Raimondi Leveling System for installing large tiles.

Here’s a new tool I’ve added to my ol’ toolbag- the Raimondi Leveling system.  It’s a product that not only acts as a tile spacer to ensure uniform grout lines, but it’s used to help larger tiles all be flush to the tile next to it.

Large tiles are sometimes the most difficult to install because they won’t conform to surfaces that aren’t quite flat as easily as smaller tiles.  It’s very easy to end up with tile lippage, which is where one edge of a tile is higher than that of an adjacent tile.  This is not good and needs to be prevented.

This is the same project- all finished up!

That’s where the Raimondi system come in.  I didn’t mean this to be a product review, but hey, it works!  The system includes a spacer that sets under the tiles but has a piece that extends above the tile and provides the correct space between tiles.  A plastic wedge is inserted that brings that brings the two tiles up flush to each other.

They sell some nice accessories to insert the wedges that work well.  I’ve found the system, which isn’t cheap and might use $50 worth of clips on a large job, very useful and speeds up the process very much.  Not only does it make the tiles flush, but it also tends to ‘clamp’ the two tiles together so that when you work on the next one it doesn’t change the ones you’ve done previously.

I used the system for this project near the mall in Bloomington, Indiana.  The flooring and walls were 12 x 24 polished tiles with fairly sharp corners and small 1/8″ grout joints.  This meant that there was no lippage allowed!  It turned out great and I’m excited to have discovered another tool to make my job not only easier, but have better results!

(I will mention that this system will not cure terrible floors!  If your surface is not nearly flat, these clips will not fix it.  Prepare the substrate accordingly before tiling.)