Are your tiles glazed? If so, they're the easiest things in the world to clean. You can use almost anything with impunity. The trick is to mop the floor often rather than waiting for it to look dirty. That way you don't have to worry about crud building up on the grout. People complain about cleaning the grout, but I've never had the problem.

For daily mopping, I use an old fashioned Fuller string mop, with warm water and a little liquid detergent (mild dish liquid). If you need something a bit stronger you can use an acid or base household cleaner, like vinegar or ammonia, and for really stubborn crud, try a soft household brush with a broom handle.

easiest thing in the world:

warm water and dish soap

or

white vinegar and warm water

DO NOT wash your floor with vinegar!!!!! That's the WORST thing you could do to your grout!!

A vinegar wash is a one time deal, and for one thing only, and that's when the floor is initially installed, if there's alot of grout haze on the face of the tile, you use it then to remove the grout haze, and even then, that's only IF NECESSARY.

Think about this-- if vinegar has such a good reputation for removing the haze, what do you think it's doing to the grout in the joints? Repeated washings with vinegar will break the grout down over time, drastically reducing the life of your floor. In addition, it'll bleach every bit of color out or the grout. This is about the worst thing you could use on a tile floor

Besides, you want your kitchen to smell like a big salad all the time? :-)

Bill,

Good to know about the vinegar. I'm a proponent of more washing and less scrubbing, so rarely resort to anything more than water and dishsoap.

I do know people who use a vinegar solution, so will spread the word about it being bad for grout. They likely use such a dilute solution that they don't notice.

That's the problem. You WON'T notice, until one day, all of the usddeen the grout starts to powder out of the grout joint, or it starts incessantly crumbling right in the joint. In the mean time, the grout will begin bleaching from the surface on down.

Bill, what would you recommend for heavy duty cleaning of floor grout? I guess what I am asking is if there are any "safe" products that clean well. I am hopeful, LOL!

Thanks for your time.

JoAnn

I'm not Bill but I'm believe he's a bip proponent of OxyClean for cleaning grout.
Monica

Absoultely. a BIP proponent!! :-)

OK, I am clueless...what is BIP?

JoAnn

It's a typo for BIG. I was just busting chops on Monica. She's an old "bud". :-)

LOL! I was searching & searching wondering what it stool for.

Thanks for the info. As soon as this remodel is complete I will have to pick up some Oxyclean. ;-)

I love my Bissel Steam mop! However, it doesn't clean grout. But I like the fact that I'm not using chemicals on my kitchen floor, only steam. Gets up the ickyist crud. When necessary, I get down on my hands and knees and use oxygen bleach on the grout.

Bill, there are three tile and marble guys in my family (all who have done work in Italy and other parts of Europe). I've seen jobs they completed 25 years ago where the owner has used a combo of white vinegar and water (1 part vingegar and 3 part water, this will take care of strength of solution and smell) to clean on a weekly basis and the grout has had no issues.

I've used the solution for 15 years and I've have had no issues with stability of grout nor grout color fading.

We have a tendency to overcomplicate suggestions and recommendations at times...

I'm not complicating it at all. In fact, I'm simplifying it for you. Vinegar is an acid. Grout is a portland cement based product. Acid weakens and bleaches cement. If a=b and b=c, then a=c. Talk to the TCNA and see if your idea floats.

Just for the record, I've also seen jobs where vinegar was used for less than a year for normal cleaning, and took a medium brown grout and turned it to a beige.

Maybe the grout 25 years was superior to some of the crap we have now? Were these jobs done in Italy or the the US?

Before colored grouts, there were two colors-- grey and white, because those were the two colors portland cement came in. When I first started in the trade, sanded grout consisted of portland cement and silica sand, mixed in equal portions, and most marble got grouted with pure portland cement mixed with water. Even today, it's still common over in Italy to use portland cement with or without sand for grout, especially with stone.

I've also been there, from one end of the boot to the other.

I get the logic, though I disagree on your conclusion given my personal experience and the experience of folks in my family. As you know, porcelain, ceramic, marble is used everywhere in Italy and I can tell that white vinegar/water solution is used everywhere to clean the material and the grout (and I haven't seen catastrophic results, as you're in implying).

There are also plenty of other occurences, liguids, products that hurt tile/grout (dirt, walking on floor with heavy shoes, store based cleaners with chemicals, etc.)...

Glad you've toured the country (Italy); I'm sure you learned lots...

Bill, Is wet mortar also portland cement?

Glad you've toured the country (Italy); I'm sure you learned lots...

And thank you for your cynicism. I did.

Disagree all you want. Like I said, run it by TCNA and see what they have to say about it. Matter of fact, I'll give you the url to a forum where atleast two members I can think of right off hand who sit on the TCNA board hang out. one of them is even on the ANSI board-- a guy named Dave Gobis (the other being Eric Heidleman from Noble Company).Go over and ask over there what they think about it. For anyone confused about who you should listen to, I would recommend the same thing:

Here is a link that might be useful: John Bridge's Tile Advice Forum