Precautions With Grout

By Heppo Lamaze

Grout as a binding material works best and is used for tiled floors, tiled walls and all other tiled surfaces. It is tagged as "mortar" material because of its typical role of filling joints, partitions and holes in cemented areas without the drastic need of defacing and destroying the said work area to allow the filling material in. Grout is used for art and craft projects since it works best with binding stone against stone together. Proper installation of your grout can help it last through quite a good number of years.

Problems can occur when the grout is mixed wrongly, and this often leads to thousands of dollars in repairs. Some installers would make the innocent mistake of adding too much liquid with too little grout powder. Grout, when mixed properly, should have the right thickness and consistency, not like runny batter. It should at least act like putty. It should stick well, and it should not run over.

The better grout mixture, to minimize accidents and errors like these, are those that are pre-mixed with powdered latex and acrylic modifiers that make them bond a whole lot better. By including these compounds into the grout, they are able to stick better, provide better support and minimize chipping away over the years.

If the mixture is too runny, add more powdered grout until you can stabilize the mixture into a putty consistency. But this process should only be done in the first mixing. Never, ever do this when you're applying the grout already. If you change the mix while you're applying the grout onto the tiles and the floor, it would be the same as sabotage. Initial mixing sets the grout's strength, should you, for example, add more water because the grout is hardening already, that would be the same as personally destroying the grout.

Tempering too, could pose a hazard to your grout if you don't know what you are doing. The last minute keep ups of having your grout and lines moist so that the grout can gain strength while curing is also crucial to the overall life expectancy of the grout. There is no idle time when installing grout. One must always be focused about it from start to finish. - 29977

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