Tile Terms You Need to Know - Part 3

Grout and grout joints:
Traditional Grout is Portland cement, colorant and sometimes silica sand. Sanded grout is required when the grout line is greater than 1/8th of an inch in width. Unsanded grout is used with narrow grout joints and with marble and granite so the sand will not scratch the polished stone . Grout is required to be placed between tile, marble or granite tiles so that the normal expansion and contraction that occurs will not have the edges literally chip themselves apart. We recommend that the grout be mixed with a latex additive to make it more dense, that it be sealed after installation to fill in the pores and assist in maintenance. More important we encourage the use of larger tiles which will minimize the use of grout and the use of mottled colored tiles so that the grout will not be as noticeable as it ages.

Caliber: Tile is a baked product and is virtually impossible to manufacture so that it will be precisely uniform in size. The more expensive the tile the more that the factory calibrates the batches of tile in to various groupings of like sizes. An inexpensive 12x12 tile might have ranging from 11 7/8 to 12 1/8 inch size within a box. A more expensive tile might be separated and packaged into boxes that have ranges of only 1/16 of an inch or so between tiles. Again, as is often the case, you get what you pay for! Obviously tile with a large range of size will be much more difficult and expensive to install and will require a much larger grout line to accommodate the variances.

More Tile Terms >>>