Laying tiles over old ones + cables in the floor

Hello forum,

I will be moving into a house this year that I have bought and will partially renovate.
Tenants still live there, so I haven’t spoken to any companies yet and am simply informing myself about certain things in advance. However, companies will definitely be involved and will carry out the whole process.

The entire ground floor is to be retiled because we simply don’t like the current tiles. So far, the plan was to lay new tiles over the old ones. My parents-in-law have just done this and it worked wonderfully.

Since the electrical wiring is quite old, no network cables have been installed, and there is also no bus system or anything similar for a smart home, the idea came to me that I could lay a lot of this under the floor since it will be "worked on" anyway.

My actual question now is whether this (layman’s) idea can make sense, or if it’s absolute nonsense to cut channels into the current tiles to lay cables there before the leveling compound and new tiles are applied?

I’m looking forward to tips / ideas :-)

Had a similar discussion with my heating engineer today, it was about laying an additional water pipe. He suggested milling a channel into the old tiles, laying the pipe in there, and then putting the new tiles over it. In principle, this is possible. Whether the amount of work involved is justifiable is probably another question.

I had a similar discussion with my heating engineer today; it was about laying an additional water pipe. He suggested milling a channel into the old tiles, laying the pipe in there, and then putting the new tiles over it. So, in principle, that is possible. Whether the amount of work involved is justifiable is probably another question.

Interesting to hear! Since I will probably need to lay quite a few more cables if I were to do it now, only the ceiling or the floor really come into question. If I wanted to bring everything into the walls, there would hardly be any wall left due to all the chases. And since I'm working on the floor anyway and want to leave the ceiling as it is, I thought that would be less effort than tearing up the entire ceiling.

I also have another option in mind. On the first floor, there are knee walls from the roof; if I bring the cables bundled into the first floor, I could distribute them there on both sides of the house over the length of the house above the knee walls and would then have to chase the walls up to the ceiling at the corresponding points and drill through the ceiling. Somehow, the option through the floor still sounds more relaxed.

always keep in mind. It is easier to access in a wall or ceiling, plaster it, and it's done. Under the tiles, fault finding is more intensive and you may have to break the tiles.