Myths and Misunderstandings: Testing the water resistance of grout

[Dan]

hi dan to be fair have a good look round the fourm and you can do a count how many bath shower rooms are tiled with small tiles how many with 600x300 and bigger . in london i would say small tiles and mosaic
one in 200 shower rooms if that .and to balance this deans grout joint will be under far more presure with wieght of water constant .not like on off shower .

That's not how it works mate.

If we're being fair as you say, it could do with more grout surface area per square cm of tile. The pressure won't be much for that cubic meterage of water. It's not deap sea depths.

It's all traffic for me though matey let's make another few of these threads. 🙂

 

[Dan]

wow what a good post makes you look sooooooo cool

Teehee

Sorry I'm not as cool as you Deano. 🙂

 

[andy8758]

Can you find me that thread by any chance? We have a new tests forum category I'd like to move it to.

It was done by Plan Tec Tiling - link to one of his posts is here Electric UFH - Heat retention tests of insulation boards
But I think he copied it from the original a year before

 

[Dan]

It was done by Plan Tec Tiling - link to one of his posts is here Electric UFH - Heat retention tests of insulation boards
But I think he copied it from the original a year before

Thanks buddy.

I've sticky'd that in the forum it's in. It'll have some use being open to the public then. That appears to be a thread that's aimed at helping the trade and not just a 'how big are me balls' type thread.

 

[Spare Tool]

30mins - 1hr busted no water yet

That's me out of the sweepstake then...damm it knew you should have used mosaics, will you be up all night watching for ingress then

 

[Dan]

That's me out of the sweepstake then...damm it knew you should have used mosaics, will you be up all night watching for ingress then

I'm still in.

🙂

If that's 450 x 900 x 450mm with a single 435mm x 3mm grout joint using fine wall grout. And the adhesive is 4 or 5mm thick. That cardboard is going to see more moisture out of the air surrounding it.

 

[Dan]

30mins - 1hr busted no water yet

If you lift it above your head does it look like it's doing anything underneath mate?

 

[The D]

Thanks buddy.

I've sticky'd that in the forum it's in. It'll have some use being open to the public then. That appears to be a thread that's aimed at helping the trade and not just a 'how big are me bal

30mins - 1hr busted no water yet

ok we have a winner 6.5 hours fully submerged with standard wall grout

 

[John Benton]

I'm actually surprised it took that long.

Although showers aren't subject to constant submersion in water, it shows that grout/adhesive is not 'waterproof' as many customers believe it is.

The thing is, once the water has penetrated the grout it's into the substrate, and that starts to spell failure, hence why I tank all showers, even over the bath showers. I only take it up a metre above lip of bath and tank the shower wall and approx. 1m in length on long side of bath.

Interesting to see where the water has actually penetrated. You can see the small dots I suspect where the grout joint is but it concentrates more at one end. Was the box on a slightly uneven surface Deano?

 

[macten]

I think nearly 7 hours is pretty impressive.
I'd be curious to see how long it would take if box was primed and a modified grout was used.
Got an op on Wednesday so not working for next 2 or 3 weeks, if Dean doesn't want to do anymore tests then I can.

 

[Old Mod]

[QUOTE="macten, post: 781811, member: 2899"
Got an op on Wednesday so not working for next 2 or 3 weeks.[/QUOTE]

Good luck with that Nick!

 

[The D]

I think nearly 7 hours is pretty impressive.
I'd be curious to see how long it would take if box was primed and a modified grout was used.
Got an op on Wednesday so not working for next 2 or 3 weeks, if Dean doesn't want to do anymore tests then I can.

Go for it m8 it's all good

 

[macten]

Cheers -

[QUOTE="macten, post: 781811, member: 2899"
Got an op on Wednesday so not working for next 2 or 3 weeks.

Good luck with that Nick![/QUOTE]

Cheers,
I take it from your profile pic that you skydive?
My op is from a skydiving injury 20 years ago.
Where do you jump? GoSkydive? I mainly jumped at Langar but stopped nearly 10 years ago.

Back on topic - Will definitely do another test in the coming weeks

 

[Old Mod]

My op is from a skydiving injury 20 years ago.
Where do you jump? GoSkydive? I mainly jumped at Langar but stopped nearly 10 years ago.

Very quickly😀
Ouch! Swooping? Lower legs?
Silver Stars Cirencester, Empuriabrava mainly, haven't jumped for a while tho 🙁

 

[macten]

No legs are fine. I only ever messed a hook turn up once, I hit the ground horizontal (that's how bad I got that wrong) and bounced - only injury was that I bit right through my lower lip so really, really lucky.

Don't know if you ever tried this but if you grab a mates leg grips when they deploy you can get an amazing flip off it. One day we decided it would be a good idea to do this but with a 3rd person hanging on to my legs.The thought was the 3rd guy at the end would get an even more impressive result. That's not what happens though. My top half got wrenched upwards but my lower half stayed where it was and I felt a pop in my abdomen followed by such a bad pain I couldn't even arch. I had to deploy on my back and soon after landing noticed that my ball sac was the size of a grapefruit 😱
So it's a hernia repair I'm having done next week. Almost 20 years to the day when it happened. It already got fixed at the time but now it's back (I blame all the tiling I've been doing)

 

[Dan]

I think nearly 7 hours is pretty impressive.
I'd be curious to see how long it would take if box was primed and a modified grout was used.
Got an op on Wednesday so not working for next 2 or 3 weeks, if Dean doesn't want to do anymore tests then I can.

Do one with mosaics first without the primer!

 

[Dan]

So what have we learnt from this? That in a normal environment if a shower gets used a couple of times a day, after a couple of days water will actually get through...?

And if it's a more course grout with any amount more than one grout joint, a lot is going to get through?

 

[Old Mod]

No legs are fine. I only ever messed a hook turn up once, I hit the ground horizontal (that's how bad I got that wrong) and bounced - only injury was that I bit right through my lower lip so really, really lucky.

Don't know if you ever tried this but if you grab a mates leg grips when they deploy you can get an amazing flip off it. One day we decided it would be a good idea to do this but with a 3rd person hanging on to my legs.The thought was the 3rd guy at the end would get an even more impressive result. That's not what happens though. My top half got wrenched upwards but my lower half stayed where it was and I felt a pop in my abdomen followed by such a bad pain I couldn't even arch. I had to deploy on my back and soon after landing noticed that my ball sac was the size of a grapefruit 😱
So it's a hernia repair I'm having done next week. Almost 20 years to the day when it happened. It already got fixed at the time but now it's back (I blame all the tiling I've been doing)

Holy shittaki mushrooms batman!
Ur crazy! Hahahaha how the hell du get away with not only with that hook but 3of u! U might as well left ur canopy tied to the wing!
And deploying on your back! U gotta charmed life my friend! Haha
Oh well don't know till u try eh Nick! Haha
Well at least ur avatar isn't the result of a mal eh! Haha (it's not right? Haha)

 

[Dan]

No legs are fine. I only ever messed a hook turn up once, I hit the ground horizontal (that's how bad I got that wrong) and bounced - only injury was that I bit right through my lower lip so really, really lucky.

Don't know if you ever tried this but if you grab a mates leg grips when they deploy you can get an amazing flip off it. One day we decided it would be a good idea to do this but with a 3rd person hanging on to my legs.The thought was the 3rd guy at the end would get an even more impressive result. That's not what happens though. My top half got wrenched upwards but my lower half stayed where it was and I felt a pop in my abdomen followed by such a bad pain I couldn't even arch. I had to deploy on my back and soon after landing noticed that my ball sac was the size of a grapefruit 😱
So it's a hernia repair I'm having done next week. Almost 20 years to the day when it happened. It already got fixed at the time but now it's back (I blame all the tiling I've been doing)

Sounds painful!

 

[macten]

So what have we learnt from this? That in a normal environment if a shower gets used a couple of times a day, after a couple of days water will actually get through...?

And if it's a more course grout with any amount more than one grout joint, a lot is going to get through?

I agree if we were talking about standing water on a wetroom floor. I'm thinking more of a situation involving the walls of a shower cubicle or the shower end walls above a bath.
I've not long had a shower and 30 mins later all the jasmine coloured grout is no longer dark. I appreciate in winter that would take longer to dry out. That's a far cry from my walls being submerged underwater for 6 or 7 hours. Dean's test suggests, to me anyway, that in a normal shower environment with a shower being used 2 or 3 times a day - there's very little risk of water ingress. I'm betting the same test using a primer and a modified grout would last a lot longer.

I also think if Dean had used mosaics then the time to failure would have been the same. Yes more water would get through which would mean more real world damage in a faster time but can't think why it would initially soak through to the cardboard any quicker.

I AM a fan of tanking. It is imperative in some situations and in all the others - well if you can eliminate a risk, no matter how small, then it's worth doing in my opinion.
Just can't accept that a proper install is doomed due to the absence of tanking. I know for a fact this isn't the case because I've ripped loads out and they were fine.

 

[Dan]

I'm taking from it the fact that grout isn't waterpoof. Which was the point I was making in the thread deano linked to. Not sure a 5 day course or a 6 hour fish tank would prove otherwise.

 

[The D]

So what have we learnt from this? That in a normal environment if a shower gets used a couple of times a day, after a couple of days water will actually get through...?

And if it's a more course grout with any amount more than one grout joint, a lot is going to get through?

what i have learned from this is that it takes 6.5 hours for water to fully penetrate standard unmodified wall grout when it is fully submerged (the grout used is not anything special it is actually the bottom of the range of grouts as for corser grout you only use in kitchens and non wet areas why would you need to test them for water ingress unless you intend to use them incorrectly?)


from my test i can say with confidence i can run my shower at home for a good four hours

and that is ample time for all of the people in my house to have a shower without water ever getting as far as the background. The shower will then be off for a good eight hours which is ample time for the water in the grout to dissipate before the shower is used again.

I have a tanking system in place as a backup to protect my background should the shower ever get used for longer than the grout will withstand the water.


i say what i have learned when actually what i mean is what i have proven with my test, as i have been saying this all along. (apart from the 6.5 hours) Dan if you wish to prove me wrong you will need to do your own test but i think that will not happen as the thing i have learned from these last two threads is that you actually know far less about tiling than i previously gave you credit for.

 

[The D]

I'm taking from it the fact that grout isn't waterpoof. Which was the point I was making in the thread deano linked to. Not sure a 5 day course or a 6 hour fish tank would prove otherwise.

who ever said grout was waterpoof.

 

[White Room]

I got that right 1-12 hours🙂

 

[Dan]

who ever said grout was waterpoof.

Nobody Deano. Nobody mate.

 

[widler]

I thought it would be quicker, i didnt vote though, i forgot 🙁
I think it proves that tanking a wall is not esential , to be honest and i hope the rest of the folk on here don't bull#### , tanking domestic showers did not occur until recently(im sure 1or2 will have 🙂 ) , ive never seen it being done in the 80/90/2000s , possibly only the last few years since wetrooms became the rage .
Yes ive seen failures , but its usually a really crap job to begin with .
Cheers dean for taking the time to do it

 

[Dan]

WP1 by BAL was about in 2002 for sure. Sold it at topps back then. Whether I was used or not is another thing.

 

[Old Mod]

I thought it would be quicker, i didnt vote though, i forgot 🙁
I think it proves that tanking a wall is not esential , to be honest and i hope the rest of the folk on here don't bull#### , tanking domestic showers did not occur until recently(im sure 1or2 will have 🙂 ) , ive never seen it being done in the 80/90/2000s , possibly only the last few years since wetrooms became the rage .
Yes ive seen failures , but its usually a really crap job to begin with .
Cheers dean for taking the time to do it

Well Craig to be honest mate I've been tanking showers since 2006, not every one I'll grant you, but that's when it was first spec'd for me!
So certainly with some of the architects I've encountered tanking has been something they've believed in.
Just because something is 'new' doesn't mean it's not a good idea.
If the client asks for it, I'm certainly not gonna say "nah s'alright missus u don't need it!"
And I will always suggest it because I do think it's a good idea!
It certainly can't hurt, and it can only increase the longevity of a finished project, so why shouldn't I encourage it?
And I'm certainly not saying this experiment has had no merit, because it has, it's proved very interesting actually!
But u seem dead set against tanking Craig, is there a reason mate?

 

[Dan]

I agree if we were talking about standing water on a wetroom floor. I'm thinking more of a situation involving the walls of a shower cubicle or the shower end walls above a bath.
I've not long had a shower and 30 mins later all the jasmine coloured grout is no longer dark. I appreciate in winter that would take longer to dry out. That's a far cry from my walls being submerged underwater for 6 or 7 hours. Dean's test suggests, to me anyway, that in a normal shower environment with a shower being used 2 or 3 times a day - there's very little risk of water ingress. I'm betting the same test using a primer and a modified grout would last a lot longer.

I also think if Dean had used mosaics then the time to failure would have been the same. Yes more water would get through which would mean more real world damage in a faster time but can't think why it would initially soak through to the cardboard any quicker.

I AM a fan of tanking. It is imperative in some situations and in all the others - well if you can eliminate a risk, no matter how small, then it's worth doing in my opinion.
Just can't accept that a proper install is doomed due to the absence of tanking. I know for a fact this isn't the case because I've ripped loads out and they were fine.

Note that your grout may appear dry. But the moisture it's carrying to the adhesive is still existent. And that's what builds up over time.

 

[The D]

Note that your grout may appear dry. But the moisture it's carrying to the adhesive is still existent. And that's what builds up over time.

hahahahahahahahahahahaha you are as mad as a march hare, do you smoke crack ?

 

[macten]

Note that your grout may appear dry. But the moisture it's carrying to the adhesive is still existent. And that's what builds up over time.

Then maybe a better test is to repeat what Dean did but leave the water in for a couple of hours then empty it.
24 hours later repeat and so on. If your theory is correct then it will, at some point in the future, surely fail yes?