Grouting advice needed for small glass mosaics

[budbecks]

Hi all.

I have a problem with some small mosaic glass tiles. The glass mosaics are 8mm thick and are small 15mm x 15mm. I have tiled a bath base and complete shower with them. I have also tiled the entire bathroom including floor with 300mm x 600mm porcelain tiles. The customer brought all the materials through the local building merchants and so they supplied the correct grout and flex adhesive etc.

The trouble i have is the grout they supplied is BAL wide joint 2 - 12mm grout. All of the joints are 2.5mm and the mosaics are 1-2mm obviously. I have managed to grout all the large porcelain tiles but the mosaics are going to be a pain in the neck using wide grout. I find it horrible to use and very sharp and very gritty. I've used it before of wide grouting and its great but rubbish for mosaics.

The customer will probably only use BAL as that what the manufacturer recommends but is there a better grout for mosaics.

I need to grout about 9m2 of 15mm x 15mm x 8mm glass mosaics. How much/many kilos of grout would i need to complete the job.

If any one can help i would be very grateful and would save a lot of swearing 🙂

Thanks in advance

BB

 

[Rookery]

Bin the BAL wide joint grout cos its much too coarse. I'd use Mapei Ultracolorplus. I'm sure you can persuade your customer that its a better choice for the mosaics.

 

[macten]

If customer wants to stick with BAL then get microflex.
You'll obviously struggle to get that course stuff into small joints and being glass would probably scratch the tiles.

 

[Dannym80]

As above, got to be BAL microflex.

 

[cam_low]

BAL Microflex all theway, what colour are you using ?

 

[budbecks]

I went to nearest topps to see what they had.

The colour is charcoal so i'm limited as to sourcing it as i need it by Friday.

They had 2 different types which i think were microflex or superflex ? which had charcoal in 3kg bags at £11.50

The other was the new version with microban in it, more hygienic i think. but that was in ebony but in bigger 5kg bags at £15

what i have already done is charcoal in colour so i guess id have to stay with charcoal as i nor them seemed to know how much different the 2 shades are.

How many bags do you think i would need ? i know this is a hard question but they dont give coverage for mosaics on the bag and i know they take quite a bit.

Thanks for the inputs guys

 

[Ian]

I reckon you'll need a bit more than 5kg, but not as much as 10kg for 9 m2 so, probably get a 5kg and a 2.5kg bag.

 

[cam_low]

Charcoal colour is exactly that, charcoal. Microflex comes in ebony. As does micromax. micromax is a more gritty than microflex. I would stick with two 3.5kg of microflex as to not scratch the mosaics.

 

[budbecks]

topps said the superflex was finer but this was the one they had in 3kg and in charcoal.

The 5kg microban bags were courser they said and the colour was ebony.

Does anyone know if theres much of a difference between the 2 colours ?

Otherwise would i be right in thinking its 3 x 3kg bags of superflex in charcoal for about 9m2 ?

 

[budbecks]

Charcoal colour is exactly that, charcoal. Microflex comes in ebony. As does micromax. micromax is a more gritty than microflex. I would stick with two 3.5kg of microflex as to not scratch the mosaics.

Yes micromax is what they had in ebony.

Ok i'll stick with superflex or microflex in charcoal 3 x 3.5kg bags should do it