I would say normally without a doubt it is his responsibility. But it sounds like you purchased some of if not all the material and or at the very least asked him to add or use a product he was not familiar with. Not that that will get him off the hook but ultimately if this is the case you both bare some responsibility, him more so but it is your floor. What does the contract say about cleaning or final cleaning? Has he been paid?

Thanks for your response, millworkman. I have worked with this contractor on several projects in my house over the last ten years, and we don't have a formal contract. We work from the bid and keep up with the changes as we go. I always purchase the tile directly (his preference), but this time I bought the grout and admix recommended by the tile shop. I discussed both with him before I bought them and he was okay with the products. He and the crew were happy that they would not have to seal the grout because of the admix.

Honestly, this took me by surprise because he is so meticulous about quality. The job has taken longer than he planned, though, and he is ready to be out of here. I tried to give him a check yesterday with some hold-back for the loose ends, but he would not take it. They didn't clean the tile after grouting for days on end, I would say at least a week and maybe longer. I am thinking maybe I should pay for any products needed to clean the tile but ask him to do the work.

"What does the contract say about cleaning or final cleaning?"

I would not consider cleaning grout haze to be included in a "final" construction clean-up. It should have been done immediately, not left on the tile to dry. It is the contractor's responsibility to clean the grout haze off of the tile. But since he doesn't seem to know what he's doing when it comes to grouting, or have any familiarity with the products he's using, I'd be somewhat leery about having him proceed. Some grout cleaners can etch the tile and you really need to follow instructions carefully.

"The job has taken longer than he planned, though, and he is ready to be out of here."

Tough luck. He contracted to do a job and he needs to complete it correctly, not leave you with the "loose ends" that were caused by his crew not cleaning up the grout haze immediately.

I agree with you Jelly, I was just trying to find out more info as to the relationship and what the contractor might try and use as an out.

Sorry this happened to you. About 5 years ago, I had a very well regarded and experienced tile guy do my 800 ft of tile with epoxy grout (his suggestion). He did not clean it well as he went along as per the instructions. I did not notice the problem until weeks later after the rest of the work was finished and we did the final clean-up. The stuff would not come off - even with the cleaner the grout manufacturer recommended. My contractor (who hired the tile guy) came in with a crew and tried like heck to get it up. In the end I accepted a credit - what else could I do? But over time the haze has worn off and is not nearly as noticeable as it once was. I hope you have better luck with your haze problem.

Thanks for the feedback, everyone. I called ProSpec about the admix and what could be used on it. It was an interesting call...the guy yawned all the way through our conversation. Anyway, he said it is fine to use sulfamic acid to clean the haze, and that the problem has nothing to do with the admix. I just tried a 50/50 solution of vinegar and water on a few spots with a plastic scrubby and some of the haze came right up and some didn't. But I am encouraged that it will come up with the right products and some effort. HIS!! :)

I don't know what to think about the whole thing. This guy is a tile guy that can also serve as GC, and this is his fourth job for me because he does such good work. Even yesterday when he was doing odds and ends, he was seeing things on his own that needed a little more attention and taking care of them without me saying anything. And yet he is willing to leave me with haze on my tiles. Go figure.

Good news. I just talked to the contractor and all it took was me telling him we have haze and it needs to be cleaned off the tiles. He does not believe we need to go so far as using the acid on it. But he is taking ownership and that is what I wanted.

Thanks again for the responses!

Looks like you have a resolution.

FWIW, most grouts are already modified. Adding a third-party additive to the grout can do three things;

- cost you more money
- affect the grout, usually in a negative way
- cause finger-pointing down the road when problems arise.

As to who has responsibility for leaving a clean surface? The installer. If there's a GC involved that hired a tiling sub, it's up to the GC to work things out with the tiler.

Sulfamic acid is a good product to start with. The fact that the process has dragged on for a bit works in your favor. It's given the grout more time to cure. Do be careful with the vinegar. Although it's a mild acid, it can dissolve the fines in your grout, giving smooth grout a sandpaper texture.

I had grout haze on my kitchen floor which I pointed out to my contractor immediately after the floor was done. His solution was to flatten cardboard boxes and put them on the floor. He said the abrasion would take off the haze. I thought he did that because he figured if I couldn't see it I wouldn't complain. I ended up having to clean the haze myself after they finally finished the kitchen (which was months later). I used a scrubby and full strength white vinegar and it really worked. However my tiles are porcelain and my grout is epoxy. I knew I was going to have to recolor the grout anyway because it was about four different shades of mushroom, so I wasn't too concerned about hurting the grout.

You can thank your lucky stars that your contractor isn't a weasel like mine was and that he is taking responsibility for removing the haze.

Thank you for the continued responses and information, mongoct and jerzeegirl. The tile guy said he didn't think he would need to go so far as to use the sulfamic acid. He was supposed to come Saturday but didn't. I have tub surround panels going in today so I cleaned the tile in that area myself over the weekend, and water and elbow grease seemed to be sufficient. That was good to see, but given the square footage, I am leaving the rest to the tile guy to clean.

Mongoct, the admix was from the same manufacturer as the grout. The main reason I wanted to use it was to have a little added insurance that the grout color would be consistent, but we can still see some variation in different areas. It was all the same batch applied at the same time, so the tile guy could not explain the difference. It is not offensive, and some people might not even notice it, especially when the room is finished. We used warm ivory and some areas are a brighter white than others, causing the grout to stand out more than blend in as I wanted. I am just adding this note in case it helps others decide on admix in the future.

Thanks again, everyone, for the helpful responses!

I'm glad your tile guy will take care of the grout haze.

I have 5x10 floor and the row of 12x12 tiles alongside my tub needed to be replaced twice due to deflection that was finally corrected. They used the same grout in that area, different batch obviously, and it's slightly darker than the rest of the floor. It was a slight annoyance to me at first, about .5 out of 10, but my floor has many shades of gray and now it doesn't matter.

On Monday the tile guy cleaned the tile with sulfamic acid and the floor looks fabulous now--exactly what I wanted. The acid evened out the grout color, and when I mentioned that to the tile guy, he said, yeah, there was some efflorescence going on with the grout and the acid removed it. So why the heck didn't he say this before? This guy was SO particular about everything going through the "build" stage and then he is trying to leave me with grout haze and efflorescence. Go figure. The shower walls do not look as good. I think he just hit a few spots on the walls because all the expensive polished nickel fixtures are installed and he didn't want to risk damage from the acid. (My thoughts, could have/should have been his words.) Later in the week I did notice two tracks where the acid must have run down the shower door and over the polished nickel hinges. I've been working on the hinges and hopefully the damage from the acid will become less noticeable. And once other problems are resolved, I will very carefully go over the wall tiles with the sulfamic acid myself to remove the remaining haze.

I now have a new problem, which is that the shower floor is weeping around some of the edges where the floor meets the wall. We thought it was a leaky shower head, but I realized this morning that the shower head is dry and the floor is still wet. I dried the floor and have been watching it weep all day. And I am about to weep myself. A new problem deserves a new thread, but all of this experience so far leads me to certain conclusions about the admix for the grout. We've only been using the shower since Monday, and we only noticed the floor wetness on Friday evening, but already mildew has been popping up all over the floor, just very thin black lines along the edge of the tile right now, but I think it has to be mildew. The admix is WORTHLESS!!! It hasn't sealed the grout, and it hasn't made the grout more mildew resistant--at all. It has provided a scapegoat to my tile guy for the haze ("had never used admix before and had never had a haze problem before"). So, mongoct, if you see this, you are so right about there not being a good reason to use the admix, and that it can cause problems to use it, and has for me. I called the local rep for the admix before we used the sulfamic acid on the grout, and he was very hedgy about the sealing benefits of the admix. I knew at that point that I had wasted time, trouble and money on the admix. When all of these problems are resolved and the shower has dried out really well, I will go back with a "real" grout sealer.

Thanks again, everyone, for your helpful advice and shared stories.

You should try posting at the john bridge tile forum. There are lots of pros there who will be able to give you good advice. Take some pictures - they like pictures.

Thanks, jerzeegirl. I was thinking the same thing. I posted there yesterday and added some photos last night and they are providing some helpful feedback about the wet shower floor.

Can you post any photos? Do you have any pics of the problem areas, plus any of the construction of the shower (if you have any)?

You can attach a single photo to each post using the gardenweb upload feature, or you can post numerous photos within a single post by typing...

<IMG SRC="" WIDTH=600>

...for each photo you want to post, and inserting the url of your hosted photo between the quotation marks in the above HTML code.

It's not uncommon for the shower/floor intersection to be the last area to dry out in a shower. It can sometimes be nothing more than water dripping down the walls that collects at that joint.

Or it might be that as the floor approaches the wall, the slope fo the floor flattens out, or even dips down. "Dips" int he floor that can hold water, we usually refer to those as "bird baths".

You can take a straight edge on your floor. See if the floor slope is constant from drain-to-floor, or if it flattens or even reverses slope as it gets near the wall.

"Weeping" water? When you wrote that, that leads me to believe that water is coming out of the floor and wetting the top surface of the tile/grout. Is that what's happening?

I'd look to see if there is a leak behind the wall. If the leak was on the pressure side of the shower valve, ie, before the valve, it probably would have indicated itself earlier.

If the leak is on the shower head side of the valve, you can pick up a couple of items at any box or hardware store. Look for a 1/2" threaded pipe cap. Should look something like this, it'll be made of brass or maybe galvanized iron:

Also pick up a 3" long 1/2" threaded nipple, it'll look like this:

First, unthread your shower head from the shower arm. Leave the shower arm protruding from the wall. Remove the escutcheon plate that covers the shower arm hole. With the shower head removed, thread the 1/2" cap on to the shower arm.

It depends on your shower valve, but with some valves you can remove the shower valve escutcheon cover plate, allowing you to see inside the wall. If yours allows that, do it.

Turn your shower valve on.

Look through the escutcheon plate hole(s). If there are any leaks in the plumbing behind the wall, they should indicate. Sometimes you can see them. Sometimes you can hear the water spray. I've even wedged a piece of paper towel deep in the hole, left it, and come back later to see if it was moist.

A leak can be from a poorly soldered fitting, or from a cross-threaded fitting or a threaded fitting with no teflon tape. A leaky threaded fitting will be where the shower arm threads into the wall union.

If you find water trickling down from above, turn off the water. Unthread the 1/2" cap off the shower arm, and unthread the shower arm from the fitting inside the wall. There should be teflon tape on the threading. You can then wrap the nipple you bought with teflon tape, thread it into the wall, then thread the cap on the nipple and turn the water on. Hopefully there will be no leak.

If no leak, the leak was at the shower arm. Inspect the arm threading for damage. It might be cross threaded and need replacing if the threads were damaged. It might just need a good wrapping of teflon tape and need to be tightened.

So, probably too much writing on my part. But hopefully it'll get you started on your diagnosis.

Good luck! Mongo