by Chuck Harding

Created on: January 17, 2009

Cleaning floor grout, any floor grout, whether it is in a kitchen, bath area, an entry, or an outdoor patio can be done without a monumentous labor bill or expensive cleaning solutions. Being a retired tiling contractor, cleaning tile had to be on of my least favorite jobs. At worst, it's boring, and at best, it's mind relaxing during the no-brainer task.

Why don't we start with what grout is, understanding what you're working with always helps. Grout is cement, some colored some just plain old gray. Grout comes in sanded and non-sanded form. Reason...the sand is a aggregate that keeps the portland cement from cracking when the grout joint is more than 1/8 of an inch. Being that there are sand crystals mixed in, even though they are very fine, it causes the grout to have a rough in texture. If you looked at sanded grout under magnification you'd think you were looking at the surface of the moon. Thousands of miniature pits in the surface.

Oopps. You just spilled a glass of milk or dropped a plate of spagetti on your beautiful ceramic floor. You scramble to wipe it up before it stains the grout, wiping it two or three times to make sure. Sorry it's too late folks...remember those tiny little holes in the surface, well they are full of milk or spagetti. Mopping and wiping will help some but it won't get it out of those little buggers in the surface. So whats the answer? How can you get them clean, they don't make a brush with a bristle that small.

Clean grout all starts with WHAT you clean it with on a regular basis. Don't use any soap when you mop your floor...most soap contains oil and it will stain the grout, doubt it? Look at what a leaking old clunker did to the driveway concrete. Water softeners are a big culprit of the white film which eventually spreads across the entire floor...why? The salt. Most tap water in most cities contains hard mineral elements, e.g. lime. iron, etc. Your grout has many enemies! The least of which is an occasional spill.

I advised every customer to use only clean clear water and a cap full of white distilled vinager when mopping their tile floor. But over a period of time your grout will begin to look discolored even cleaning as I suggested. Here's what you can do...go to a place like Home Depot or a tile supply house and ask for the grout cleaning acid, use as directed. Buy a small stiff nylon brush. "But I've done that and it still comes out looking dirty after it dries." you say. Right! I know because you forgot the little secret contractors don't often share. The secret is-

SCRUB IT WITH THE MILD ACID SOLUTION AND NYLON BRUSH-WIPE IT CLEAN WITH PURE WATER AND CLEAN COTTON RAGS-HERE'S THE SECRET - THEN PUT THE NOZZLE END OF A SHOP VAC HOSE FLAT ON THE FLOOR-SUCK THE EXCESS OUT OF THE GROUT JOINT-THAT REMOVES 95% OF THE RESIDUE OUT OF THE TINY LITTLE HOLES. HEY! THE GROUTS CLEAN. ROCKET SCIENCE!

I strongly urge you to seal the grout after you have it looking good. Use a quality TOP SEALER such as Stone Glamor, 24 hrs after cleaning, this will seal and smooth out that rough surface that's so hard to keep clean. My almond colored tile with dark brown grout looks like the day it was installed thirty years ago, and I did nothing special to keep it looking that way, I just used common sense simple solutions. I hope I have taken some of the dread out the task of cleaning grout, it's a time consumer, it's a little physically demanding, but what's not is something you can't do yourself.

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