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We were contacted about this modern quarry tile floor in the kitchen of a farmhouse in Royston, Barnsley. They were fed up of the grout making the floor look grotty and whatever they tried they couldn’t get the grout to look any better. They explained they had used lots of different cleaning products on the market, and had spent a fortune, but the floor still looked the same. Royston is a village right on the border of Barnsley and Wakefield, it’s situated in South Yorkshire but is historically a part of the West Riding of Yorkshire.
The trouble with Grout is its cementitious texture which traps dirt and I suspect that they were using a single bucket to apply and rinse their mop during cleaning. This results in the mop being rinsed in increasingly dirty water which is put back on the floor where it is brushed into the grout where it gets trapped. Ideally you should use two buckets, one containing the cleaning fluid and the second containing water where you rinse your mop afterwards.
There are several solutions ranging from continual grout cleaning through to replacing the grout which is expensive. In this case the Quarry tiles were the small 6in x 6in format which covered the entire ground floor of this old farmhouse and with the grout lines being 10mm wide replacing the grout would have been a mammoth effort.
My recommendation was to deep clean the Quarry tiles and grout, removing any sealer from the tiles in the process and then reseal the tiles and the grout to protect both from ingrained dirt. I demonstrated the process on a small test area to see how the floor would respond and much to the client’s surprise there was an immediately and dramatic improvement. They were more than happy to go ahead with my quote and get the floor sorted.
Deep Cleaning Quarry Tiled Kitchen Tiles and Grout Floor
We started by soaking manageable areas of the floor in a strong dilution of Tile Doctor Pro-Clean, it was left to work its magic for ten minutes before a rotary machine fitted with a rotary brush was used to scrub the floor. The slurry was then extracted using a wet vac before the floor was thoroughly rinsed with clean water then extracted with the wet vac again.
The floor was quite large, so it took most of the day to repeat this process across the entire area scrubbing by hand where necessary to remove stubborn staining. By the end of the day the Quarry tile and grout was looking much cleaner and brighter and I had now doubt that once the floor had been sealed the customer would be really pleased with the result. The floor was left overnight so it would be ready for sealing the next day.
Sealing a Quarry Tiled Kitchen Floor
I returned the following morning and started by testing the floor was dry using a moisture meter. Applying a sealer to a damp floor would be counter productive as the seal would not cure. The floor was dry, so we applied an impregnating sealer to the Quarry tile and Grout called Tile Doctor Ultra-Seal. This is a penetrating sealer which doesn’t affect the look of the tile or darken the grout. It’s a natural look sealer which won’t make the floor shiny but is formulated to provide maximum stain protection. It is also an excellent grout sealer so will help keep the grout lines looking great.
They were over the moon with the new look floor!
For after I recommended the use of Tile Doctor Neutral Tile Cleaner which will keep the floor in the best condition. It is pH balanced so will won’t prematurely erode the sealer like the stronger products you find in supermarkets which can break down sealers with constant use.
Source: Grout and Quarry Tile Cleaning and Sealing Service in South Yorkshire
