Removing Grout from new Mosaic Swimming Pool Tiles

A tiling company were in touch last month with an urgent request to assist on a project that had just completed tiling a swimming pool at a house in Sandy which is just south of St Neots. The company had done a lovely job of tiling the pool with 60m2 of blue mosaic ceramic tiles however were having issues removing the grout that was smeared on the tiles.

Grout has come on a long way in the last ten years and manufactures are producing some very durable products using modern ingredients such as a resin cement which has high water repellence characteristics. It was a product like this that had been used to grout the swimming pool however given the warm weather and the large tiling area involved it had dried quickly and set hard on the surface.

The tiling company was now struggling to remove the grout haze and naturally concerned the owner would not be impressed with the result quickly got in touch looking for a solution. We deal with these issues all the time so given the area involved and a photo of the pool I was able to provide a quote over email which was accepted, and I was booked in.

Removing Grout Haze from Mosaic Swimming Pool Tiles

My solution was to apply a product called Tile Doctor Grout Clean-up which pretty much does what its name suggests. It contains concentrated phosphoric acid and a cleaning agent, a formula specifically designed to remove light grout smears (grout haze) but also effective on removing mineral deposits such as efflorescence, rust staining and hard water marks.

Working in sections the Grout Clean-up was diluted with water and sprayed onto the tile. It was left for a couple of minutes to soak into the grout smears and then worked in with a black scrubbing pad. I was able to use a floor machine for this at the bottom of the pool and smaller pads fitted to a hand buffer on the wall tiling. After agitation, the area was rinsed with water and the soil removed using our vehicle mounted extraction machine which is very effective.

The job took about ½ a day to complete and as you can image the tiling company was quite relieved, I had managed to resolve the problem, they even left the following feedback for me:

Left a lovely job, very happy with the finish, would definitely recommend. 

Professional Removal of Grout Smears from Mosaic Swimming Pool Tiling