What's up with this tile?

[Bryce C]

Hey yall. One of our commercial customers asked us to clean 4 bathrooms in their office that is adjacent to their factory where they produce small plastic containers. The bathrooms each looked like this

Assuming it was like every other tile and grout job I've done I removed the dust and debris, sprayed it with a high pH detergent, allowed it to dwell for a while, scrubbed with a crb, then extracted at my portables max psi of about 400. Which always gives me stellar results. But the bathroom looked like this after, unacceptable.

I actually repeated the whole process and turned the heat all the way up and it didn't budge. Surprisingly the grout looked alright but the porcelain tile surface was ugly. Had a few magic erasers in my truck and gave those a try. You can see the difference here.

Seemingly solved my problem. One of those rare floors that just need some melamine pads and a rotary and we're good to go. I rescheduled the cleaning service and ordered the pads. But then it got weirder.

 

[Bryce C]

Got back the next week and started in a different bathroom. Cleaned it then padded it with our new melamine pads. Touched up some edges with magic erasers and it looked pretty good!

Went to the bathroom we attempted to clean the previous week. Did the same process, but the shmegma wasn't coming off the floor even with the new melamine pads. Despite watching magic erasers just wipe it away previously. I realized after wrestling against this stuff for hours that some aspect of our cleaning process the previous week set or cured the shmegma making it now impervious to the melamine pads and magic erasers. I asked the owner what they are likely tracking in from the factory and he told me it is urea formaldehyde. Did some research and found out that heat cures it

 

[BIG WOOD]

Hey yall. One of our commercial customers asked us to clean 4 bathrooms in their office that is adjacent to their factory where they produce small plastic containers. The bathrooms each looked like thisView attachment 129724
Assuming it was like every other tile and grout job I've done I removed the dust and debris, sprayed it with a high pH detergent, allowed it to dwell for a while, scrubbed with a crb, then extracted at my portables max psi of about 400. Which always gives me stellar results. But the bathroom looked like this after, unacceptable.View attachment 129726
I actually repeated the whole process and turned the heat all the way up and it didn't budge. Surprisingly the grout looked alright but the porcelain tile surface was ugly. Had a few magic erasers in my truck and gave those a try. You can see the difference here.View attachment 129727
Seemingly solved my problem. One of those rare floors that just need some melamine pads and a rotary and we're good to go. I rescheduled the cleaning service and ordered the pads. But then it got weirder.

Same thing here happened to me last summer. I think I brought it up on here somewhere

 

[Bryce C]

Same thing here happened to me last summer. I think I brought it up on here somewhere

Which part, the magic erasers and melamine pads working or your cleaning process curing or setting what you were trying to remove making it almost impervious?

 

[BIG WOOD]

The lady of the house went behind my work with white magic pads and made my tile job look amateur, so I packed up my tools and didn’t charge them

 

[Bryce C]

The lady of the house went behind my work with white magic pads and made my tile job look amateur, so I packed up my tools and didn’t charge them

Yea I read your post about that. This tile job was weird. I was on the phone with a teacher/supplier during the job and he said I probably won't see anything like this again, he hadn't heard of anything like it in 30 years.

We discovered that if we cleaned it and didn't hit it with melamine pads immediately afterwards then what was on the floor actually cured and become nearly impossible to remove. If we cleaned it and immediately hit it with melamine pads before the shmegma cured or set it cleaned up beautifully. The bathrooms that we let sit too long after the cleaning took us several hours of experimentation to finally get it to "acceptable" results. I tried stripper, several different solvents, ammonia, a ton of stuff and what finally worked was Chemspec Ink Remover buffed with melamine. It wasn't perfect but it got us out of there a bit after midnight and a paycheck.

 

[Bryce C]

Sentinel has a line of various adhesive removers that target different types of compounds like epoxy, acrylic, urethane, etc... I bet one of those, possibly their acrylic adhesive remover not sure, might tear through that stuff more easily next time we go there in several months.

Adhesive Removers Overview - Sentinel Products

Sentinel Adhesive Remover Products | At Sentinel, we manufacture quality adhesive removers and cleaners for cutback, pressure-sensitive, latex and acrylic, urethane, and other glues and mastics. If it sticks, Sentinel brand products can clean it!

www.senpro.com

 

[hogjowl]

Thank you for not making a video of this

 

[Bryce C]

You bet. There would have been too much cursing anyways.

 

[Mikey P]

Nothing much worse than commercail bathroom tile.

 

[hogjowl]

The only thing I have found that helps is this on the grout lines between prespraying and extracting, but don’t used that mop head. Use the grout head that comes with it instead.

 

[Bryce C]

The only thing I have found that helps is this on the grout lines between prespraying and extracting, but don’t used that mop head. Use the grout head that comes with it instead.

View attachment 129767

A steamer eh, I'll put that on my list thank you. Is scrubbing grout with a crb part of your process? Or do guys with truckmounts typically just turn up the heat and pressure?

We got spanked on this job because the part that was almost impossible to clean was actually the tile surface rather than the grout. When I went there to quote the job I only tested the grout lines with my inspection kit, I had no idea there are situations where the tile surface could be the tricky part. In this case what they are tracking in from the factory isn't bonding with the grout, but sticks like hell to the glazed surface of the tile.

 

[Mikey P]

Fortunately the trend to hit tile and grout with 1500 PSI is fading.

Maybe we are finally noticing the damage to the grout we've been doing.


Word of advice, if you buy equipment for extreme and unpleasant tasks, you'll want to get your money's worth, and end up hating your work...

 

[hogjowl]

That steamer will make you want to kick your dog on tiny squares of “subway” tile like that, but it will make a difference in your cleaning.