How To Remove Excess Grout Once Hard

[Steven01]

Hello,
I have undertaken the task of tiling my bathroom floor which was going really well until it was time to grout.

I used a two-part grout that required mixing and applying relatively quickly which lead me to make the, POOR, choice of wiping off the excess when i finished.

As you may have already gathered, The grout has now hardened and is not budging, I have tried, hot soapy water, white spirit and even heavy duty paint stripper with no joy.

Can anyone help?

Kind Regards
Steven

 

[Nestor_Kelebay]

Epoxy resin will be mixed with xylene as a thinner, but I don't know enough about epoxies to know how common that is and whether xylene will soften cured epoxy grout.

Phone up your local carpet retailers and ask to speak to their Installations Manager. Ask the Installations Manager who sells flooring supplies in your town, and phone those companies and find out who sells Mapei flooring cements. Those guys will know who the local Mapei sales rep is.

Mapei makes their own epoxy based grouts called "Kerapoxy" grouts. I've never used them, but my understanding is that Mapei makes also markets a chemical from removing dried epoxy grout from tile as well.

The Mapei sales rep will know whether this chemical will work on other epoxy grouts as well.

If not, then I'm afraid your best bet would be to look under "Industrial Coatings" in your phone book and see if any of the companies listed there know of any way to remove epoxy coatings from ceramic tile floors. If not, then I think your best bet is simply to use a sharp paint scraper to scrape it off as best you can.

 

[JohnD]

You've given me an Nestor.

Phone the company who make the grout. I bet they've come across the problem before.

 

[Steven01]

Many Thanks

 

[Steven01]

Any more ideas will be greatfully received, I need as many avenues to follow as possible.

 

[JohnD]

When I made a similar mistake, I used a very sharp chisel to pare it off, but I wasn't very pleased with the results (marked the tiles)

 

[Nestor_Kelebay]

You could also try using a heat gun to soften the epoxy and make it easier to scrape off. Heat guns are frequently used in flooring removal, so the Installations Manager at any flooring store might loan one to you if you plop down a damage deposit on it.

Paint retailers also use them to dry paint before showing it to a customer, so, if you could take some epoxy to them, they could tell if the heat gun will soften it.

Typically, a heat gun will heat air to about 300 to 400 deg. C.

 

[mondyman]

lol ive just moves into a house and th efeckin grouting lol is soooooooo bad i just cant believe it....ill have to post some pics when i get a spare 5 minutes lol...after the 1000000000 jobs i have to do for the wife !!! Also the lazy b@stard who owned the house ( it is nice just needs decorating ! ) only painted half of every doorframe so when u open the door u can only see the newly glossed side !!! some people...

 

[clc1]

Our tilers hadn't used epoxy grout before so their clean-up was not as thorough as they should have been, hence I have been looking for a solution to get rid of the residue left on our cattery ceramic tiles ever since. I tried loads of stuff. There are lots of solutions in the US, but couldn't find any here in the UK. Cif lemon cream cleanser and a stainless steel pan scourer worked well for small areas, but we have a huge area and I have a slipped disc so I needed the big boys' to help. Finally found that Nitromors (the really jelly like one in the green tin) painted on the tiles (avoiding the grout lines) worked, left it on for 10-20 mins and then scoured with scourer/scratched off with chisel, then scrubbed with a nylon scrubbing brush using washing up liquid in a bucket of water, then finally wiped excess away with a flannel, again dipped in washing up water and wrung out till nearly dry. Very labour intensive, but will be worth it when it is done. Moral of the story: pay more to employ the tilers who have definitely used epoxy grout before, if you can find them...

 

[mypetearthling]

I'm not 100% certain about epoxy but with normal and flexible grouts there is a grout residue remover that you can get... HG, Lithofin, Fila etc all make their own versions of these, it may be worth giving their Technical lines a call to see if they are effective on epoxy grouts. This will depend on the brand of grout you used, as some are actually designed to be resistant to acid!

You could also try asking in the Tiling forum, I'm sure some of the guys there will have come across this before.


K