WHICH GROUT IS BEST??? Grout Testing with SHOCKING Results!!!

hello welcome to tile coach i'm isaac ostrom and i am a licensed tile contractor from northern california and this is a video every tile installer should see today we are going to be testing the most popular high performance grouts in our industry stay tuned you will be shocked by the results yeah i'm really excited i want to do this grout testing so let's get this going okay so what we got here we got a bunch of different grouts what do we got here uh we got prism and hey steve tell us why we should be testing these grouts so we're trying to find the most easiest to apply and the strongest version of grout that has the best color the best application and that's always what we're about to hunt for you can see which one we can really trust so yeah so these are all uh different grouts that we've used and some of these in particular some of these grouts we've had trouble with with um softness so this is really unofficial testing but uh we're gonna go ahead and grout up some boards and then let them cure for a week and then come back and test them so let's go ahead and get them mixed up guys um they all all the buckets already have are you doing the water that they need on them uh you got your uh two and a half quarts in there ronnie go ahead and just dump it let's get him going let's let's go ahead and fill up all the rounds yeah so ardex fell you're doing two and a half two and a half two and a half quarts perfect too small for this deal here oh yeah it's not liking it let me get in there it's not like yeah what are you talking about i don't want to burn your you're not going to just turn it turn it on one so it's slower oh yeah you have the water in there zach yeah on this when you have the 12.5 pound bags you only go with one of the bags of coloring it comes with two in the kit yeah so that's the permatellar select all so you right that little packet like a tide pod right yeah and i think that's what the sealer is the the bag itself you see that johnny have you seen that before that's the the permacolor select this is how you mix their grout yeah it has a water soluble uh packet in there yeah it's like a tide pod thing so and it just gives you the specific color that you're after but just slowly have to just just cut that open and pour it in so yeah you want this to break down and then this is like a base it's uh basically like a white color in there color so all your coloring when you buy it you choose it by this coloring kit so all the grout is basically exactly the same colors honestly you can get a plastic container and it has the markings on it and you just pour it all in right up to the measurement shake it up and you're good to go oh cool well what are you doing on friday that's the regular caramel color which we got to get going too so this is this is regular permacolor and this is permacular select oh okay so two and a half was a little must instead of we started with two and a quarter point eight quart well if you follow the directions it should be right right say two and a quarter to two and a half okay and what do you have i put two and a half okay two and a half it's a little loose but that's i mean if we're mixing it for the specs yeah and which one's this seat this is the tech power glove [Music] we've had issues with tech before with the softness serious softness okay whole thing ronnie whole thing i gotta double check with my name here mapaya yep you got uh that's right my baby [Music] that's why that's it all right [Applause] so let's let them flake for uh five minutes yeah so that's what we'll do and then we'll try to mix them yes uh yes sure yeah yeah we're gonna mix for five we're gonna slake for for uh five slack slate pronouns pronounced [Laughter] [Music] black so a lot of them if you read the back of the bag they will tell you to mix your initial mix up to five minutes i'm not going to stand here for five minutes i can't suppose i found 60 in my head twice yeah so i do mix for two minutes okay normal yeah we usually mix until it's screaming but that's not always the case maybe we should mix it more to get you out of it yeah probably when in doubt follow the instructions hey kirk how did you how did you get so dirty dude that's not your hands that's your hand that's just from the bag when i opened the bag the black was already on the tip of the bag and i'm a dirty guy anyway unfortunately how'd you get all this because i'm just going isaac go yeah all right so it's right here so how how long did we mix mix these up for on the initial mix about five minutes about five minutes three or five they usually say three to five three to five minutes okay so we're letting them all slack they're all mixed up uh we got the little uh containers where they go and what's up johnny yeah so so now we're we're labeling uh each of our sample boards so we don't lose track what what is the main instruction what did it say there kirk well for professional use only that i don't know we're in trouble we're in trouble that automatically just calls disqualifies um we put the right amount of water in it says use four parts of powder to one part water by volume pour water in mixing container first and then add the ardex f l mix to a creamy smooth lump free consistency then apply that's basically all it says so nothing about slacking nothing about slacking nothing about mixing for more than any amount of time it says till creamy okay but i'm still going to mix remix it again i'm still it's still slacking i'm still going to mix again before i apply yeah that's what we do with it all our grouts even if it doesn't say yes all right so we got uh three different grout floats here this is the uh this is one of the most popular grout floats right here leave your comments in the section below let me know what your favorite uh grout float is this is this is a marshalltown right yeah that's mine just be careful yeah johnny says it's brought to you by hasbro leave it in the comment section below what's your favorite oh we got two red ones oh that's a longer one look at that that's not easier to get under toe kicks that's good for toe kicks good for toe kick yeah because this here the shorter your handle hits the bottom of the cabinet most of the time so that one there helps you so so what i'm thinking is we have our we we spread them have our meeting and then we'll wipe it dirty this is the dirty water nice little mosaic so johnny told me how much he likes spectralock one he should be the only one that has to use it [Laughter] we should test that coming up against these so so yeah we'll have one of these and leave it you know whatever performs best here we'll put it up against spectralock one and see what happens that'd be great it's gonna be just a fight honestly high ground it's gonna kick gear okay this is uh my grout's better than yours this stuff applies really nice though so the laticrete permaco i'm liking the application on that one i mean that one's way better it cleans up nice i mean uh it's got kind of an elasticky kind of feel to it like it has it's not just sand and cement and colorants it feels like it has a little bit more but i mean laticrete's always good they make the best epoxy i've always loved their epoxy grouts they're two parts yeah i've always liked it they're tough they're not fun to work with but it's epoxy grout when you going gets tough and you're worried that one's a good one to put in so if we can get this one to harden up i'd be happy i'm really interested to see how this ardex grout does yes not that one oh that's wet as hell yeah this is a hard xfl yes okay mixed to their recommendations dude you got us in the background okay fresh water or what you said what new water for h1 right okay hey let's get a word of the week and a break real quick guys you got one yeah i got one come on i was thinking um i was thinking since we're gonna have a real busy september get us through september uh push we'll just use the word push let's push through it hopefully come the fall we can take the foot off the gas a little bit but until then uh let's push and if you got a shark bite make sure to push all right all right all right so push on three oh let's have a good week guys one two three push all right okay so it's been 30 minutes uh so we're starting our initial wipes let me know what you guys think as you're wiping are they set up good yeah the permacolor looks really nice that's that's setting up nice uh what do you got there johnny is that the that's the uh prism yeah that's prism i thought this art xfl was real we're gonna let that one we're gonna do the one last okay we'll do that one last the one that was a little wet yeah the yard xfl looks a little bit a little bit loose still [Music] that's the permacolor select right zach yeah which was this one that one looks uh looks good too and i'm using just a little hardly any water on this too i think that's a key which one is that kirk this is the ultra ultra mapei mapei i'll try yeah yeah that one that one set up pretty nice is that when uh the little stone pieces yeah yeah so this is actually good because we're using a mix of stone and glass to kind of give us a good representation of how the grout's going to cure on different uh surfaces it's a grout potty potty oh what's that what do you what which one is that steve this might be the tech that's pretty i like that that's the power group this might be the power stuff see this one has definitely tacked up harder than the others so we're kind of uh dang 30 minutes might have been too much for that one huh feels like this so it's grabbing on to the grout but nothing that little bit of agitation can't take off i like that one that looks good i did it yeah look at oh the prism brought it up beautiful yeah it is i like the prism prison is one of my to go i do like yeah you like the prism from the color yeah i like that it's smooth is that let's let's confirm that's power groud is it yeah yep okay so that's the power grab that's the one that's already setting up on the the glass you want the makita zac perma color that perma color came out nice too damn this one's setting up enough i think i can hit this ardex what okay so how did that ma pay um groud up kurt wash came right off the surface well no i rinsed up my sponge completely and then just went across it and then didn't clean streak it yeah you like it nice yes and in the amount of time the keesel wasn't as clean and it didn't seem to smooth out as much as the ultra i played something black scratch this right here zack's working on the vermicolor same one yeah that's a really nice cleaned up nice uh steve did you get that uh that tech off of the tiles is it coming to come off that's kind of interesting so the tech took some work we're we're having to really work at that power group from underneath that's right and the keys keezle was easy right keezle came right up yeah it came up it came up i like the name of that and okay let's see how the uh art xf completely rung out sponge let's see how that works okay normally we leave a little water in our sponge and we do a little bit yeah but right now i want to try to see how this works on this sample you know look everything's everything oh there's stone in this one too yeah i'm like how did you my buddy let's leave a little water to see how to gel he's got a couple ones that's pretty dark i mean it's cool glass that way i can do it that way i just say but when that runs up okay so we're back a week later for a monday morning meeting 7am on monday if you want to see what goes on in these meetings i don't know maybe you want to see it leave it in the comment section below if you would what's your thoughts on that i mean it's usually just us kind of talking about the jobs and stuff but might be interesting to you so if it is uh let me know leave your comment in the section below uh but we're gonna head in the guys should be getting set up and we're gonna test out this grout so it's been carrying for a week we're going to test it for first of all hardness and then we're going to talk a little bit about how it applied how easy it was to apply and clean up good morning what's up guys hey hey hey hey morning dudes good morning what's up ronnie good morning good morning okay so we got prism we got permacolor select ardex fl permacolor regular permacolor ultra color that's the mapei tech power grout and kiesel let's just start with this one so who who grouted this one was that i think it was me was it i think so yeah so what did you think about it uh did it was it any different good pretty good yeah it's pretty good okay cool you don't really seem to care do you yeah i care very much hey so this so it looks good i i don't know it looks looks like a nice grout wrong color probably huh but tan on white but dried solid okay so let's see with um let's see if it comes out so the main thing i want to test is if if you can scrape it out so it's been a week and i just want to see if there's any i'm using just a plastic spacer and so it's it's hard it's not it's it's wearing it's wearing down the spacer instead of um scratching it out so that's a that's a good sign that a hard plastic spacer can't scratch it out let's see what happens when we get it wet so the the problem that i've been noticing is when the grout gets wet that's when it seems to get soft so let's let the water just soak for a second and and then the difference yeah my gosh so now with the plastic spacer you see that's wet areas too showers and everything so yeah so that's keysel right there that's kesel so this isn't as bad as is as the prism so you got a razor knife prism or power grout so hey ronnie just just do a little scrape of a joint with water area oh that's easy i'm not putting pressure not even pressure on it huh we don't want to teach our customers that they can strike scratch their grout after you're done showering make sure you scratch your ground out disclose don't touch your grout when it's wet so yeah so that's how much it's coming off of there with the knife so if you use force could you scrape scrape it all the way out what was that wow dude that's a weed that's going through it way too easy dude whoa yeah so that's now do it on the dry area does it come out dad people do scrape their showers too yeah well if they're using a brush okay so now let's check out this is mapei ultra color okay try the same thing ronnie with the spacer yeah just just try it dry and see if it does anything it's science this is holding up yeah on it so nothing nothing coming off okay let's get it i wanna do a little dry oh i do yeah try it dry with the razor knife well i gotta put force down you have to put force on it to scrape so that's that's not too bad let's try when you get it wet this one seems to maybe it's just the color but it doesn't seem to soak as much water in as the other one repellent huh yeah okay now try running you want huh yeah that was much better is that harder not doing anything really so that's the ultra color yeah nice so with the spacer we we didn't have hardly anything come up the knife a little bit of pressure getting a little bit okay we got a little bit better than that one yeah okay so that so so mapei ultra color and kiesel so far ultra color is a lot harder and i did notice when you put the water on there it didn't absorb as fast as this it took a little while for the water to to absorb so i think this is just a harder grout okay let's try regular permacolor as we'll start put a little water on here let it sit in there huh yeah so this this was one as far as how they grouted up uh i think did you do this one johnny or did steve do this one um i think i did the prism okay so i think steve did this one but i noticed when he was grouting it that it was really smooth i really liked how it looked when he was grouting it really yeah [Applause] so perma color nothing scraping off with the hard spacer just type that that actually looks like um that's the plastic that looks like the plastic maybe a little bit of powder but that's acceptable it wasn't just coming off okay so now we have uh now we have a wet area little indentation there so yeah so we had some coming off of there damn so oh yeah that it's a regular perma color looks pretty soft take a knife to the wet area too yeah let's hold on one second do a different joint yeah that came off so wet with a plastic spacer yeah so this is uh steve had warned me he did one job with this had to replace the tile i had to go because it was a glass tile that cracked i had to tear ground out yeah he did take the grout out and he was isaac that stuff's pretty soft so i kind of expected it with the regular permacolor and this this was again this was going to be like one of my answers to the grout problem and then he told me that he's like yeah not so fast so okay so let's check out prism prism is is probably one of the most popular grouts used today i would say okay come on prison yeah this was yours this is johnny he's seen johnny bow i like the way you guys you guys both like the prism yeah we do it works good it's easy to wash it doesn't discolor too much all right okay regular dry i'm putting force down too okay force it's like a little bit a little bit of powder it's not no i think that's plastic so dry i don't think anything came off okay dry nothing came off okay let's let's try it with a little bit of water oh easy i can feel it the prism you know that felt like sand really going right in ah so that's consistent with with what i had in the showroom so i did so the prism the video that i made of my showroom grout and i didn't disclose what grout it was it was prism grout a lot of you guys guessed it but that that grout has been in there over seven years a long time so uh you might think well this has only been grouted for a week well i the grout in my showroom has been there for seven years so i i don't think that's the case i think it's just a soft grout so prism prism so far is the softest probably would you say ronnie unfortunately and that's the grout the guys like to use that's johnny's favorite grout sorry johnny it's all good i figured the stuff that's hardest to work with i think it was worse than this yeah huh this one looks like you pirate or was that with the rocket yeah that was right so keisel so so far out of the four uh we'll go we'll go worst to best okay so worst the softest was the prism then the keys knife to that one then the regular permacolor then the ultra color has been the best so far okay so let's just go around before yeah another wet because we did it over here let's just real quick one good sweet oh yeah we can tear that tail out right now yeah okay what a bummer man yeah coming out almost just like we put it in yeah pretty easy so really soft plastic spacer just yeah dang it okay so let's go um okay let's try the the permacolor select i'm interested in that one stop that was yours zach why don't you do this one okay so permacolor select okay so zach we got a dry hard spacer try to give it a little do it on the edge there and see if you can really give it some force nothing nothing it's just taking the plastic of the spacer [Applause] okay a little bit a little tiny bit of sand huh so this but this one's probably similar so far to the mapei okay so now we got a wet area let's try the wet area [Applause] this is a little softer yeah i see a little bit of color here take the um let's get the water off of it first and now try it you getting anything out of there yeah it's going down so yeah so that's focus there we go so that was coming out with the spacer so even the permacolor select see so that's my fear is that and that's that's the callback that i had was the customer was scrubbing their grout right so if i just have a terry cloth towel look at that so yeah okay yeah so so you have a customer after their the grout's been done and then their shower they got a new shower they go in the first time they go to clean it they have they have a rag and they're you know i want to clean my grout here so here here's a terry cloth towel and this is wet grout that hasn't been messed with and if they were to just go like that and turn it over and see that yeah you'd be like what the hell right wow so this is perma color select and that's how much came off it okay on to the next one so yeah oh yeah try it with the knife johnny see what it does with cheese yeah [Music] well you know what they would do you know if if a rep came in and i said hey hey mr laticrete rep um you know we're when we when we scrub it with the towel it comes off the answer would probably be well don't scrub it that hard you know i mean that's just probably say whoa that's not what you're supposed to do with grout so good luck telling our customers that back in the day we use hydrant which is now bostik yeah and we of course we had three sixteenths quarter inch joints we had to use a grout cutter to get that stuff out that was out without an attitude yeah remember when we put the we put the white stuff in with the hydra mitt oh god that was like made it hard that was like a sidewalk new products that are supposed to be even better why are we yeah okay on to the next ardex fl so this this one took a little bit longer to set up right but the instructions on it were were nice remember this is the one that just said mixed to a creamy consistency didn't give you like a one five minutes one and a half quarts and it was real wet wasn't it it was this is the one that was real wet this is the black one that i had all over my hands yeah but we still added the the amount of water you had a range and we did the wettest inside it was sweat yeah but it looked it ended up finishing out really nice [Music] okay so art xfl what again you got a new spacer i'll just use a different end okay so spacer test pretty solid solid huh there's like nothing coming off of that let me see yeah there's nothing coming off of that oh no i'm wrong are you getting color yeah i'm getting colored that's off the dry look at that so i wonder if this is going to be just a norm i mean there's not going to be any way around it people wash their grout and they get a little color off but if the grout doesn't come out of the joints it's still holding right they're not going to be going in there scraping it with a rock we're just doing a test right yeah we're doing a test the color that's that's not a good sign yeah but what if a customer comes in and again okay so let's try this let's try this before what's up stevo all right man so we're we're putting it to the test this is ardex fl this is easy you think the color yeah look at that so just getting it wet taking a terry cloth towel that's what we're getting look at that look how much black is coming off of there it's definitely tougher than the prism coming out really really easy with that really easy with that yeah well we just tell the customers the grouts are made this way so we can do repairs if we need to it's easier to take out [Laughter] that was a joke okay last one uh tech power group which is one that started this whole thing isn't it yeah hey steve you wanna you wanna test out your your power grout so this is the power grout this is the one that we had trouble getting it off right like yeah it dries real fast it dried it dried fast there's a real little kind of a shocker for uh all above all the other grouts this one dried the quickest okay hold on okay so what we're doing we're starting with a spacer just to see the dry on the dry and then we're doing a spacer on the csc if you can get it to that's grinding the spacer down yeah there's nothing coming off of that so here's the wet a little bit huh uh a little more that's i mean it's flaking off let's see we can see the granules coming off of it yeah it's coming off a little bit they all fit they're all failing once it gets wet see that's what yeah that's what people haven't been getting about when i talk about this they're like no it's hard it's hard as a rock like you know we we have it in the bucket here like this is these are our buckets from uh our clean out and i mean they're they're rock solid when they're hard but look when when you get get them wet just a little wet look at that i mean it just comes right out let's just scrape the power grout with the knife since we did it did you do that steve i see how easy it is to scrape out of the joint dry hair no not wet okay i am not pushing down you're not pushing down i'm basically letting the weight of the knife scrape so you're just barely i must be really strong so so now now give it some force and see what happens yeah it just comes right now easy you didn't get it wet though did you wet it i saw yeah okay steve try it with the you take a knife or a little grout brush just a regular grout brush so prism with just a grout brush so if your customer went in and got a grout brush they're going to have stuff coming up okay so a grout grout brush with a power grout [Music] let's take some of the water off here okay now be kind of aggressive with it yeah so that i mean it's coming up but yeah maybe not it's gonna really put pressure down yeah so that's not as bad as i mean you probably wouldn't be cleaning that yeah surely yeah so look at that with just hitting it with the grout brush this is what a customer's gonna see if they wanted to scrub their grout prism's no good man i wonder how many times it would take for that not to happen though i mean eventually it'd have to stop coloring when it all comes out [Laughter] there's a little bit more in there okay which one is this okay this is the ardex we're gonna we're gonna do the grout brush on the ardex now let's try it alright xfl pulling the color up for sure with a little bit of agitation so just a grout brush that's what that's what's happening so basically they they're they're all falling short um if we could rank them what was the worst one what was the softest one we did i think prism unfortunately prism diesel and prism unfortunately fell short of them all yeah so it probably so prism was the softest and then um the keezle so it's probably prism worst kiesel's second worst and then perma color unfortunately we had high hopes for it it's probably the third worst then it probably was like a tie between ardex and power grout and then i think uh this one was pretty good that's the uh permacolor select yeah permacolor select was pretty good and the best was mapei ultra color as far as the abrasion and being able to scratch it out the hardness of it so so that's that i get a lot of comments from people about specs and compression strength you know people say well tech power grout is so and so 2 000 psi there's no way it's rock hard it dries hard on the tile yeah but what i haven't heard any testing on what we were testing here was the abrasion the ability to scratch it off especially when it's wet so do these tests for yourselves or not like i said you might be opening a can of worms if you do that but i wanted to provide this information to everybody in the industry so that you can see what happened that being said we're going to end up we're experimenting right now with spectralock one we've used spectralock one on a few different jobs and so that might be the answer so we've done a few jobs we'll go back and test them and then maybe what we'll do we'll do the same sort of test using spectralock one mapeis called flexcolor cq maybe we can use customs fusion but we know fusion is crap fusion's a whole different thing but um yeah i think that's what we'll end up doing so that's that

Channel: TileCoach

Views: 55,571

Rating: 4.8342924 out of 5

Keywords: grout, how, to, prism, laticrete permacolor, grout testing, soft grout, tile failures, kiesel grout, mapei ultracolor, customs fusion grout, ardex fl grout, Tec Power Grout, grout problems in shower, problems, grout problems, grout is rubbing out, grout is coming out, tile shower problems, tile shower cracked grout, how to repair cracked grout, how to grout, what grout is best, which grout is best, which grout is best for shower floor, cleaning grout, tile grout

Id: g3TtkEkgefs

Length: 39min 9sec (2349 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 03 2020