Best ways to clean bathroom tile grout

I'm a do-it-yourself newbie who's trying to clean the stained grout (used to be white) between the tiles over the bathtub in my bathroom.

The stains appear to be a combination of soap scum and rust stain.

I've tried several products that claim to be "grout cleaners," but they haven't worked.

Is there any alternative at this point to stripping all the grout and regrouting (quite a long job)?

Even some way of staining the grout white again?

-- Steven L.

Reply to
Steven L.
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*Comet or Ajax cleanser with a toothbrush. The bleach in the cleansers help with the whitening.
Reply to
John Grabowski

Possibly a product like CLR made for lime and rust stain removal. They all(?) are basically phosphoric acid so that should eat up the soap scum as well as get rid of the rust. They are pretty mild but if "acid" scares you, you might try vinegar. It should work too but will take much longer and/or repeated applications.

White grout is one of the abominations of man. Others include the IRS, politicians, traffic lights and light beer.

Reply to
dadiOH

TILELab Sulfamic Acid Cleaner:

Found at HD _and follow_ the directions!!

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Reply to
Oren

e quoted text -

You could try plain old Clorox (generic version also ok) bleach applied with a toothbrush, Keep the area well-ventilated.

Reply to
hrhofmann

You have two things to do. One is to clean the grout, and there are some suggestions here to do that. The second is to seal it after you have cleaned it so that it won't get to looking bad very soon. Clean it good, let it dry, dry, dry, even if you have to bathe for a few days. Sit an electric heater in there overnight to help, but get it dry, and seal, and it will stay clean looking longer. DO NOT USE TUB OR SHOWER, AND HEATER AT THE SAME TIME. Sorry, but the government requires those warnings, so I thought I'd throw one in there in case you might be the one person on the planet that might do that.

;-)

Steve

Heart surgery pending? Read up and prepare. Learn how to care for a friend.

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Reply to
Steve B

"I could tell my parents hated me. The first bath toy they gave me was a toaster!" -Rodney Dangerfield-

Reply to
JoeSpareBedroom

Have you tried this

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I have some and it works great. Don't remember where I bought it from because I've had it for years. Think I bought it at Home Depot.

Reply to
Ron

We bought a couple of rentals with dirty grout.

SWMBO would make a poultice/paste using TSP and allowed that to sit for good long period. It worked well. Once cleaned and dry, the grout was sealed.

As a kid, there was "Spic and Span". -- a cleaner!

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Reply to
Oren

On 10/18/2010 11:32 AM John Grabowski spake thus:

[O.P. posted:]

Amen to that. Exactly the ingredients I was going to suggest: abrasive cleanser and elbow grease.

Reply to
David Nebenzahl

SWMBO???

Reply to
JoeSpareBedroom

Geez, I didn't say "the dishwasher".

Reply to
Oren

Elbow grease? My supply has been depleted for several years, so I like Scrubbing Bubbles for normal cleaning....it gets rid of normal soap scum without strenuous scrubbing. Rust stains my not be removable, but a rust remover (test inconspicuously) with phosphoric acid may do the trick. I've replaced grout in a shower and it is a fairly big project, but well worth it. In the process I discovered our old shower had a lot more soap scum than was apparent....tile is light taupe, matte, so it didn't show. I could only smell soap while working on the grout until I took a razor blade scraper to the tile. Whew! When all done, sealed the grout and keep the shower open so it ventilates.

Reply to
norminn

One great tool is a grout saw. You only need to take the tile grout down a little, but get the grime out when using it. Then top with some new grout and later seal...

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Reply to
Oren

Hire a pro, ask questions...and stop staring!

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R

Reply to
RicodJour

"dadiOH" wrote in news:Nx0vo.1612$ snipped-for-privacy@newsfe11.ams:

The primary constituent of which is...?

Reply to
Tegger

Fiberglass!

Reply to
JoeSpareBedroom

Steven L.:

I own a small apartment block, and cleaning ceramic tile grout of mildew stains isn't that hard to do.

Basically, the trick is to apply bleach straight out of the jug with a tooth brush. Often, however, this doesn't seem to do anything at all, and the reason why is that the surface of the grout is clogged up with soap scum. So, the bleach you're applying isn't being wicked into the grout because the soap scum is clogging up the surface of the grout and preventing it from wicking in that bleach.

So, the procedure to follow is to first open up the porosity of the grout by dissolving the very surface layer of grout using phosphoric acid. Phosphoric acid is the most commonly used active ingredient in bathroom cleaners because it cuts through soap scum like a hot knife through butter, but won't attack chrome even at high concentrations. The most common place to find phosphoric acid is in toilet bowl cleaners which will typically be 15% to 20% phosphoric acid. So, the way to do this is to squirt some phosphoric acid based toilet bowl cleaner on your ceramic tiling, remove it to the grout lines using a rubber squeegee, and scrub with a tooth brush to dissolve the top thousandth of an inch of grout that's clogged with soap scum. Then rinse the acid off with clean water and allow the tiling to dry at least overnight and an extra day after that would be better.

Now, use a toothbrush to apply bleach to the dried grout. Here, patience is a virtue because it may take some time for the bleach to penetrate deep enough into the grout to kill the mildew and thereby remove the discolouration. A common mistake is to only apply the bleach once. It's best to apply it every few hours and the discolouration will start disappearing. As it disappears, you still apply the bleach, but you're applying it to less and less grout.

If the bleach just doesn't seem to be working on an area, then give that area another shot of phosphoric acid, allow to dry, and start applying bleach again.

By the time you've spent a few days doing this, you'll find your grout should be pretty white, and if there are any areas that are still discoloured, you can simply replace the grout in those areas. You should cut the grout out fairly deep before regrouting. And of course, it's always easier to wipe grout down to a uniform depth with a damp sponge if you start with the grout at a uniform depth, so scrape the new grout down with a popsicle stick before wiping it down with a damp sponge.

Once your grout is clean, you want to seal it. Throw away any grout sealer you find with the word "siloxane" in it's ingredients. "Anything siloxane" means a silicone plastic. The problem with silicone based plastics is that nothing sticks well to them, and that's as true for silicone based grout sealers as it is for silicone caulks. So if you apply a silicone based grout sealer it will stick well to the grout. The problem is that a few years down the road you can't apply more silicone grout sealer to restore the protection because the new grout sealer won't stick well to the old grout sealer.

If you can, find an acrylic based film forming grout sealer. I like a product made by Glaze 'N Seal of California called simply "Grout Sealer", but if you can't get that, then Google "DuPont Stone Tech" and you should get a DuPont web site or at least some places selling DuPont Stone Tech Professional grout and masonary sealers. Check with the DuPont 1-800 number to see if they have an ACRYLIC film forming sealer. If you don't get anywhere going that route, then buy Tile Lab's "Gloss" Sealer and Finish or Tile Lab's "Matte" Sealer and Finish, both of which are acrylic film forming sealers. Tile Lab is a division of Custom Building Products (the same people that make Wonderboard). I can't say that I'm a screaming fan of either Gloss or Matte, but one of the things I do like about using these products is that Tile Lab's "Heavy Duty Cleaner and Stripper" really makes easy work of removing the Gloss or Matte grout sealer if either ever gets stained and you want to replace the grout sealer. But, that shouldn't happen and with acrylic grout sealers like Gloss or Matte, you can just apply more grout sealer to add more protection.

Post again if you have any questions on how to clean the grout, how to grout or how to seal grout.

You can also clean mildew of of silicone caulk, but that's a different procedure.

Hope this helps.

------------------------------------- ..in solidarity with the movement for change in Iran.

Reply to
Nestor Kelebay

Good post, but why are you posting through a newsgroup spam site instead of the newsgroup itself? That's just a business that is feeding you advertising and collecting data to sell, and you get nothing in return. Usenet is and has always been a free online community with very few strings attached. That Hub thing is not easier to use, you can't use a newsreader, etc, etc. So why do you do it?

R
Reply to
RicodJour

She Who Must Be Obeyed

Reply to
Michael B

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