T
tombgrout
Hello
I’ve been setting tile for 35 years, however I’m now retired and moved from Wisconsin to Arizona, a much dryer climate. In my all my years of setting tile, I never experienced crumbling, cracking, and shrinkage of tiled grout joints until moving to Arizona.
I’ve always taken precautions to insure that the grout wasn’t old, subjected or stored in a manner that would cause it to be contaminated by humidity/moisture. As a matter of fact as a further precaution, we stored the product in new clean 5 gallon plastic pails with the lid affixed. Obviously, the type of grout for the application is necessitated by the where it’s going to be used, floor, shower wall, shower surround, etc..
As experience would dictate, I always inspected and reinforced the floor structure where necessary to prevent any movement of the floor, used a 1” underlayment with ¼” Hardbacker, and everything was properly screwed down using Hardbacker screws every 6”, making sure that none of the screw heads protruded above the surface of the plywood or Hardbacker.
Special attention was always paid to insure that during grout clean up, that grout joints weren’t subjected to excessive moisture/water. The same applied to properly mixing the grout per manufacturers specifications and consistency. When necessary to prevent premature drying the floor, it was covered and misted appropriately at proper intervals.
To the point, no matter what I have done to achieve a decent grout joint that doesn’t exhibited crumbling, cracking, or shrinkage, while using the Custom Building Products PolyBlend Sanded Grout, I’ve experienced these unpleasant results, one or a combination of the three. I’ve used just about every trick in the trade and still one or more of these conditions persist.
To be fair, I’m retired, and I’ve been remodeling my home and tiling the bathrooms and kitchen. The only difference is that I’m tiling my own home in Arizona. I’ve used different brands of grout over the years with great success, for this particular project, I’ve been using Custom Building Products PolyBlend Sandaded Grout for the floors. The tile being set are 12".
We live at an elevation of 4500 feet in a high desert climate, most of the year, humidity ranges between 6% to 12%, for a few months we enter the humid monsoon season when humidity can range between 30% to 90% plus if it’s raining, and our home is air conditioned, most are in this geographic area of the USA.
I know that manufacturers of grout products take great care to properly mix the products before bagging, however, in bulk mixing applications there’s always a chance that a specific lot/batch was mixed wrong, bagged, and entered the retail market. I want to error on the safe side and assume that the product materials were properly mixed at the manufacturer.
I have chatted with numerous highly experience tile installers in my area, and many have complained that they’ve been experiencing problems with the Custome Building Products PolyBlend Products, to the extent that they’ve chosen to use an alrernate product called Laticrete with great success, and the aforementioned issues experienced were eliminated.
Obviously, there’s a reason why these problem issues persist, and about the only thing left to do it seems, is to send a sample of the product to Custom Building Products, however, even if they discovered there was a problem with batch of the product that made it’s ways into retail marketplace, I doubt that they would admit it due to liability.
Ay any rate, if anyone on this forum has any suggestions, I would be more than willing to listen to advise, no one knows everything, there’s always someone with more experience in particular geographic areas and climates that may have an answer to what I have been experiencing with the grout product.
Thank you.
I’ve been setting tile for 35 years, however I’m now retired and moved from Wisconsin to Arizona, a much dryer climate. In my all my years of setting tile, I never experienced crumbling, cracking, and shrinkage of tiled grout joints until moving to Arizona.
I’ve always taken precautions to insure that the grout wasn’t old, subjected or stored in a manner that would cause it to be contaminated by humidity/moisture. As a matter of fact as a further precaution, we stored the product in new clean 5 gallon plastic pails with the lid affixed. Obviously, the type of grout for the application is necessitated by the where it’s going to be used, floor, shower wall, shower surround, etc..
As experience would dictate, I always inspected and reinforced the floor structure where necessary to prevent any movement of the floor, used a 1” underlayment with ¼” Hardbacker, and everything was properly screwed down using Hardbacker screws every 6”, making sure that none of the screw heads protruded above the surface of the plywood or Hardbacker.
Special attention was always paid to insure that during grout clean up, that grout joints weren’t subjected to excessive moisture/water. The same applied to properly mixing the grout per manufacturers specifications and consistency. When necessary to prevent premature drying the floor, it was covered and misted appropriately at proper intervals.
To the point, no matter what I have done to achieve a decent grout joint that doesn’t exhibited crumbling, cracking, or shrinkage, while using the Custom Building Products PolyBlend Sanded Grout, I’ve experienced these unpleasant results, one or a combination of the three. I’ve used just about every trick in the trade and still one or more of these conditions persist.
To be fair, I’m retired, and I’ve been remodeling my home and tiling the bathrooms and kitchen. The only difference is that I’m tiling my own home in Arizona. I’ve used different brands of grout over the years with great success, for this particular project, I’ve been using Custom Building Products PolyBlend Sandaded Grout for the floors. The tile being set are 12".
We live at an elevation of 4500 feet in a high desert climate, most of the year, humidity ranges between 6% to 12%, for a few months we enter the humid monsoon season when humidity can range between 30% to 90% plus if it’s raining, and our home is air conditioned, most are in this geographic area of the USA.
I know that manufacturers of grout products take great care to properly mix the products before bagging, however, in bulk mixing applications there’s always a chance that a specific lot/batch was mixed wrong, bagged, and entered the retail market. I want to error on the safe side and assume that the product materials were properly mixed at the manufacturer.
I have chatted with numerous highly experience tile installers in my area, and many have complained that they’ve been experiencing problems with the Custome Building Products PolyBlend Products, to the extent that they’ve chosen to use an alrernate product called Laticrete with great success, and the aforementioned issues experienced were eliminated.
Obviously, there’s a reason why these problem issues persist, and about the only thing left to do it seems, is to send a sample of the product to Custom Building Products, however, even if they discovered there was a problem with batch of the product that made it’s ways into retail marketplace, I doubt that they would admit it due to liability.
Ay any rate, if anyone on this forum has any suggestions, I would be more than willing to listen to advise, no one knows everything, there’s always someone with more experience in particular geographic areas and climates that may have an answer to what I have been experiencing with the grout product.
Thank you.
