A tan tiled floor cleaned in a North Jersey home, with heat and pressure driven into the grout joints and the released soil extracted in the same pass. The town, the date, the customer and the price are not recorded for this job.
What the photograph shows
A tan floor of rounded pieces laid close together, with grout running in the channels between them. A powered head sits flat on the tile, the wand angled up to the technician holding it, and vapor drifts off to the left. A sofa and a side table stand behind the work.
The tile material is not named, because a photograph cannot settle it. The photograph was taken during the work, with the head down and the machine running, and no matching before photograph exists.
What we did
- Cleaned the floor the way we clean every tiled floor: heat and pressure driven into the joint to break the bond between the soil and the cement.
- Extracted the released soil in the same pass, so it left the room instead of running into the next joint.
- Worked the corners and the edges by hand. A machine head cannot sit flat there, and that is usually where the darkest grout in a room is.
- Used the same non-toxic, biodegradable products we use on carpet and upholstery.
- Treated the grout as the job. The tile face is not what makes a floor look dirty.
What you should know
Glazed tile is close to non porous. Almost nothing sticks to it, and a damp cloth takes off what does. Grout is the opposite. It is porous, it is rough, and it sits lower than the face of the tile, so every liquid on that floor drains into it and stays.
Mopping is part of how it gets that way. A mop lifts soil off the tile, holds it in the bucket water, then spreads that water back across the floor, where it settles into the lowest point. Do that weekly for years and the joints fill with a concentrated version of everything that has been on the floor. That is why a floor can be mopped regularly and still look grey.
There is also a difference between soiled grout and stained grout. Soiled grout is sound cement with dirt in its pores, and it comes back a long way. Stained grout is cement whose color has been changed, by rust, by red wine left overnight, or by dye out of a wet mat. Cleaning takes away everything around the stain and the stain stays. We tell you which one you have before the work begins.
Whether sealer went on afterward is not recorded for this job. Sealer is worth a conversation once grout is clean, because it fills the pores and slows how fast the lines darken again. It does nothing for grout that is already dark, and putting it over dirty grout locks the dirt in.
When to call us
Call when the grout lines have gone a shade or two darker than the tile and mopping has stopped changing anything. The method and its limits are set out on Tile and grout cleaning. We cover eight counties across North Jersey and Central Jersey, including Essex County and Union County. All services are performed at your home or business, and you receive a written estimate before the work begins. More completed work is on Before and after.
