how do you seal ceramic tiles?

Question

what causes ceramic tile to come apart from grout?

Answer 1

Charlie has offered you the best advice as of so far.

When you have movement in your subfloor ,the first thing that happens is the grout cracks out.Replacing the grout will as he stated just band aid the problem.

Unfortunaly you could experience more problems in the future.

How long has the floor been down ? is calling the installer back an option?
Sorry to answer your question with questions of my own,but it raises concerns.

Good luck...

Answer 2

I think most of the problems are caused by people who install tiles without understanding much about portland cement. The biggest cause, though, is probably bad underlayment preparation. I have never been able to understand why people seem to insist on using cheap luan plywoord for a tile underlayment, and then tacking that down with a half dozen 1 inch tacks. I just ripped up a ceramic bathoom floor that had two springy layers of plywood underneath the tile, one a 3/8" plywood and the other 1/4" luan with just a few nails to hold it down. This is probably the worst stuff you can use, and for some idiotic reason everybody, and I mean EVERYBODY, seems to use it. If your underlayment is crap and moves up and down your grout will crack, break, and fall out. If this is the case sealing it will not do a thing. It's just a bad flooring job and needs to be ripped out down to the subfloor and done over from scratch, and that means getting rid of all the dumb luan plywood.

Once you get down to the sub floor you must drive long screws through the flooring and into the joists. Use a lot of screws. The idea is to have zero movement in your subfloor. I usually laydown a waterproof membrane first. After that I put down 1/2" Durock cement board set into thinset mortar, and I exceed manufacturers specs regarding the screw grid pattern. The floor tiles go on top of that, set in thinset mortar troweld out with a 1/4" square-notched trowel. The key to all of this, which NOBODY seems to do, is to keep the cement and the grout from drying out for at least a week to 10 days. I put down wet towels and keep pouring water on it for what seems like forever. Do this and your tiles will be stuck down forever and the grout will be like iron. DON'T do this and it will likely fall out in a few weeks.

Answer 3

Sounds like you don't need a tile sealer. You need a grout sealer. You can purchase from Home Depot or Lowes. The problem may be in the floor itself.

Answer 4

deflection(expansion and contraction)_in your subfloor causes grout failure most of the time.
tile should be installed with concrete board underlayment
moisture to substrait is your problem.
fixing grout is just a bandaid wont solve problem

Answer 5

you can purchase a grout sealent from local hardware store