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It ain’t just vinegar. I remember a newstory in the Netherlands 15 years ago. Seems a 400 year-old church was located between a residential area and the bar district. Always had been. After centuries of full-bladdered bar patrons not being able to get all the way home, the sidewalk side of the church was subsiding because of the dissolving foundation. My thought was if they rerouted pedestrian traffic to the other side, the church would even out again in a few hundred years. -David
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Vinegar can be your friend also: use a very dilute solution to clean that stubborn haze off of quarry tiles when grouting. just remember that grout is gonna be removed irregardless of it being in the crack or on the tile, so go easy.
Wouldn't chicken soaked in vinegar taste kinda like a pickle?
*hey Lukayou know what chicken soaked in vinegar tastes like?Tastes kinda like chicken
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I looked at some repair work today at a local Boston Market. One of the many things needing help is the floor grout in the kitchen. It seems that they use and spill a lot of vinegar when marinating their chicken and it is dissolving the grout from between the floor tiles.
My question is what would be a better grouting product that may have a higher resistance to vinegar. Maybe even a urethane sealant instead of the grout? Regular grout with a silicone seealant would surely have a short shelf life in this place and the available cure time for any products used here would be extremely minimal.
Thanks,
Pete
*Don't laugh...Plain old portland cement ?
*Luka, Plain old grout, for the most part, is plain old portland cement.Pete, how about epoxy grout? Bulletproof, but not fun to work with on a large job.Mongo
*Well geeez, that's no fun. Sorry gents.So what else is in grout ? Sand ? Color ? What about mixing something like a polyurethane in there ?
*Pete,We work in restaurants, ONLY, and all of the kitchen floor tile grout deteriorates. I don't think it is just the Boston Markets, and their products. They all deteriorate. Epoxy grout is going to be your best choice, expensive to install (Subcontractor) and a bear to work with. But, it too, will deteriorate. Just the nature of commercial kitchen floors. I think it has to do with all the grease, vinegar, detergents, lack of cleaning, excessive cleaning, sanitizers, etc., etc., etc. But, it is a good upsell when looking at the job. "You want fries eith that?/Would you like us to regrout your floor, while we're here?Good luck, let me know what you used, and how it performs. We really need a better solution than epoxy.Chuck
*Pete - We always, always specify epoxy grout in any sort of food service, food court area. Trickier to install, but regrets otherwise. Vinegar is a tough one, bet it has a PH of around 2.0.Jeff Clarke
*When I said the floor grout is disolving, I meant that it is completely gone down to the slab in most of the affected area. I was even toying with the idea of a urethane type caulking like one might use in sealing expansion joints in brick and such. Someone did recoat some of the grout at one point and this place is not very old. Of course they used gray grout over the original black.Can any of you, who are familiar with it, tell me a little more about epoxy grout? Maybe refer some better brands?Thanks,Pete
*Pete,You might want to look at these two threads: Need Help with Epoxy Tile Groutand Epoxy Grout - Any Downsides besides cost?Rich Beckman
*When I first saw the title of this thread, my immediate thought was "How much vinegar does it eat ?"
*... i allof it, apparently.Jeff
*Well now, that could be a problem when it comes time to make the salad dressing.I wonder what could be done to keep the grout from eating all the vinegar ?Does it like only apple cider vinegar, or does it also go for the gourmet varieties, and vinagrettes ?Does it always eat all the vinegar ? Or maybe does it eat some of the vinegar all of the time and all of the vinegar some of the time ?
*I've been told you can throw egg shells into vinegar and they will dissolve overnight.
*If you soak a chicken bone in vinegar it becomes rubbery and flexible. The hard part is getting the rooster to stand in the pot of vinegar overnight.
*'Zactly, Pete...Remember that "Science Experiments for Kids" thread we ran a while ago?Place an egg in vinegar just long enough so the shell softens. Then the egg can be slipped into a glass jar with a mouth slightly smaller than the diameter of the normal egg. The vinegar will evaporate out of the shell, the shell will again harden, and there you have a hard-shelled egg inside a glass bottle. You can use expansion/contraction in this as well, toss a lit match inside the bottle, when the flame extinguishes, place the softened egg over the mouth of the bottle. As the air in the bottle cools (and the volume of air thus decreases), a slight vacuum is set up that "sucks" the egg into the bottle.Another is to just immerse an egg into vinegar...the vinegar will not only completely dissolve the shell, resulting in an eerie-looking egg mass suspended in clear vinegar, but if left long enough, the acidity of the vinegar will start to "cook" the proteins in the egg white, turning them opaque.We used to use Joe D's in Post #9 to torture the kids after Thanksgiving...soak the wishbone in vinegar overnight. It's cheap entertainment to watch two kids trying to break a rubbery wishbone.
*Pete,go to JLCONLINE.COM. They have a new forum just for ceramic tile. Its moderator is Michael Berne the "tile guru".......sorry bout the referal Andy .BTW this epoxy stuff is great you can set and grout with the same thing and water doesnt affect it during clean up.
*It ain't just vinegar. I remember a newstory in the Netherlands 15 years ago. Seems a 400 year-old church was located between a residential area and the bar district. Always had been. After centuries of full-bladdered bar patrons not being able to get all the way home, the sidewalk side of the church was subsiding because of the dissolving foundation. My thought was if they rerouted pedestrian traffic to the other side, the church would even out again in a few hundred years. -David