QUESTION

I have porcelain tile installed throughout the first floor of my home (at least 1,500 square feet of tile flooring). The tile edges are beveled, and the grout lines are very wide.

COIT recently cleaned my tile, treating it first with an "acid", and then their truck-mounted equiment to scrub the floor. They claim to have applied a sealer afterward (mopped on), but the sealer was most definitely applied before the grout had dried. When they left my floor looked brand new.

I mopped the floor 5 days later with Lysol multi-purpose cleaner (1/8 cup cleaner to approx 1.75 gallons of water). A lot of sand came up from the floor, and the grout had pitting, in some places it was gouged, and there was marbled staining (on the grout) in many places.

Has the floor/grout been compromised? What might be the appropriate remediation? COIT offered to send a "professional" inspector, but many of his professional certifications do not check out and he was very nonchalant about setting up an actual appointment.

What do you recommend?

ANSWER

ANSWER - Sanded cementitious grout has sand in it.  There is a chance that grout was not as hard as it should be and when it was cleaned it caused the grout to degrade to some degree.

It is possible that if the cleaning company was too aggressive in their cleaning that the top surface of the grout can degrade causing some of the sand to dislodge and causing gouges.

The blotchy grout may be due to efflorescence precipitating at the grout surface due to the large amount of water used in the cleaning that saturates the grout and the underlying cementitious materials.  Minerals (a type of salt) in the cementitious materials dissolve in the water, and as the water migrates to the surface of the grout driven by the moisture evaporation the minerals precipitate on the grout surface.  You might be able to clean it with an appropriate cleaner that you can find at one of the cleaner and sealer companies listed in our Resource section of our website at Sealers and Cleaners.

If you can't clean the grout satisfactorily, there are grout colorants that can be applied to adjust the color of the grout, which might also stabilize it.