Grout Sealer.

Ask me in six months. I have just put in a row of narrow porous tiles in a wall of glazed ones and the tile supplier said they must be sealed. He recommended ordinary grout sealer. So I seales the tiles and the grout. Guess it's a case of wait and see.

Hi

In my opinion, you should always seal grout as it is very porous and will absorb any spills (red wine, red cordial depending on what crowd you hang around with). It will also allow fine dust to settle into the spaces between the grout 'grains' and this is what causes the discolouring over time. I recommend using Davco (or other brand) sanitised grout as is does not contain any organic material. In a wet areas such as shower recesses you should also use Grout cure to mix the grout rather than water as it makes the finished grout impervious to water, and no water means there is nothing for mould spores to attach to.

For walls you can use a product like Sure Seal aerosol to do either all the walls or just the grout.

Good quality tiles with a low porosity rating do not need to be sealed but I always recommend to our customers that they seal the grout. Keep in mind that is often easier to do the whole floor as the room is empty and of course the floor is fresh and clean.

Regards
Bradley

YES, absolutely!.....that is unless you have the very best grout, EPOXY. Epoxy grout is fully waterproof and non-porous so sealing is not required.

But there are many different sealers available, and they are NOT all created equal! The best family of grout sealers (in my opinion) is made by Aquamix. They even have an excellent grout colorant that is an epoxy sealer and can colour your grout any of a wide range of colours, from white to black. It can cover and colour over old grout transforming its appearance.

My concern with grout sealer is that you've taken materials that will last "forever", namely tiles and grout and added a material that will need to be reapplied every few years.

(It's a bit like rendering and painting a brick house. You've converted an ultra low maintenacne item into something that needs to be reapplied every 10 years. May not sound like a big deal, but if you add 100 things in you're life that need to be addressed every 10 years you'll lose 10 weekends a year. I'm already short on weekends )

I know this is an old post but just wondering if Vanderlay has remember his sealer for the tiles and grout as he coming closer to moving in???

I can highly recommend Sure Seal. National Tiles told me to seal my pebble feature so I bought some Sure Seal and started to apply it. The pebbles sort of leaked yellow stuff which stained the grout. I freaked out and rang National Tiles who rang Sure Seal. The guy from Sure Seal had never heard of it happening before. He drove over from the other side of the city to have a look, cleaned the grout for me and took some pebbles away to be looked at. Apparently they had been wrongly stacked somewhere along the line and the yellow was the glue on the back that holds the meshy stuff on that had got onto the front of them. So even though it wasn't Sure Seal's fault, he came out again, recleaned the pebbles to be sure and then sealed them. He even left me a new spray can of Sure Seal!! I have sealed evrything I can think of!

From Hynes Tiles on Old Geelong Rd, Hoppers Crossing. The aerosol is the easiest. I think they have it at Bunnings too.