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Tile and Stone Maintenance

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Granite For Worktops and Floor Tiles – Blue, Black and Galaxy

May 20, 2008 / / 0 Comments

Granite has become a very popular natural stone used in our homes. One of the main reasons of this is that it just looks so luxurious but it’s also very heard wearing and relatively easy to keep clean. Granite worktops and countertops are now quite ubiquitous in many homes across the world and granite floor tiles are increasingly found within houses.

Granite itself is found in many countries but the most commercial quarries for this igneous rock are found in Finland, Norway, Sweden, Portugal, Spain, Brazil, India and in African countries such as Namibia, Zimbabwe and Angola. As a material it was used in construction by the Ancient Egyptians and the Red Pyramid of Egypt is famous for the light crimson hue of it’s exposed granite surfaces.

Popular types of granite – black galaxy granite is one of the worlds most popular choices although it’s very success is causing a problem in that you need to be sure of it’s quality. Black Galaxy is mined in Andhra Pradesh, India and can be broadly split into 3 types – these being large specked black galaxy, medium specked and small specked – depending on the size of the ferrous rich Enstatine, gold colored specks. Originally this granite was known as Star Galaxy and since the volume mined from this location is relatively low, it does not reconcile to the number of dealers purporting to sell it. Care is therefore needed when buying it.

Most sky blue granite varieties are mined in Brazil and Zambia. The best quality material has a medium to fine grained crystalline groundmass composed of blue, white, and black crystals. In some varieties there are additional greenish colored crystals as well.

Homogenous blue granite varieties tend to be expensive and are typically mined in Norway and the Ukraine. Granite colors of blue homogeneous stones range from light to dark blue with many hues and shades in between. Homogeneous blue granite is used on both interiors and exteriors. This stone is used for flooring, facings, countertops, and in luxury furnishings.

Copyright Ian Taylor and The Tile and Stone Blog.co.uk, 2013. See copyright notice above.

What Is The Best Tile Cutter On The Market – Part 2?

May 6, 2008 / / 2 Comments

So what do you do if you have a shape to cut out, like an ‘L’ shape around a window for example? Well, for that we need a wet-saw. It’s not just for shape cuts though, most stone will not cut on a manual scribe and snap cutter and will need the water-cooled, diamond cutting action of a wet-saw.Like the manual cutters, they come in many shapes and sizes and in all budgets; prices start from around £30 for anything remotely serviceable to, well in excess of £2,000 for professional models – quite a range. For most DIY jobs a small, sub-£100 machine can be quite adequate, indeed many tile fixers will opt for economy rather than quality, preferring to buy a new machine every 12 months (or less) rather than spending in excess of £500 for one that could, in theory, last them a decade or more.

So what are you paying for with the more expensive machines? Well the quality of the build for one, cheap machines tend to be constructed mainly out of plastic, which is obviously, far less durable than the metal. The quality of the diamond disc or blade is another. I would also argue that long-term, the accuracy of the ‘professional’ machines is inevitably better, allowing for greater consistency in cutting. If you are looking for a solid, reliable mini-wet say that will cut a variety of materials (and last a while, with the comfort of knowing that you can get spare parts) then I would recommend a mid priced machine such as:

The Raimondi Supereco 98 Tile Cutter

Then there is the issue of size, with stone floors in particular, but increasingly with modern porcelain tiles, small cutters are just not capable of handling the large formats that we are buying. Larger tiles and slabs (because that is what they are becoming) mean larger cutters, if you have a tile that is 600 x 300 mm, then you (or your tiler) are going to need a cutter that has a ‘cutting bed’ of at least 600 mm – obviously. The most popular type of larger wet-saws are known as Bridge Saws due to the system of a cutting head that moves over a static ‘bed’ via a twin or mono-rail over-bed bridge. With the larger frame of a bridge saw, it is easier to support a larger motor, hence we can have a more powerful machine, which does not have to work so hard, if you have ever tried to cut through very hard dense stone with a small, and underpowered saw, you will know exactly what I mean.

Many bridge saws have lots of other useful features, such as pumped water cooling (rather than just running in a trough of water that is quickly emptied, and being human, most people neglect the chore of keeping it topped up, hence run the disc too dry and dramatically shorten the life of the disc). Also they can often be adjusted for thickness, by lowering or raising the head, so enabling multi-pass cutting for thicker materials (such as worktops and pavers). Some have options for both fixed height and floating, which allows for plunge cutting in the middle of the tile/stone – this is great for cutting out square, or even round holes.

A great example of a very flexible (and not too big) wet saw is the Exploit 70 portable tile cutter.

Copyright Ian Taylor and The Tile and Stone Blog.co.uk, 2013. See copyright notice above.

What Is The Best Tile Cutter On The Market?

May 2, 2008 / / 0 Comments

This is a very vague question, but a very common one. Of course there are many different tile cutters available and the price range varies as much as their size and shape. Choosing the right tile cutter depends on many things; are you looking for a professional model, or DIY? Is it for a one-off job or do you intend to undertake several projects over the next few years? What are you cutting, small ‘standard’ wall tiles or large format, hard and brittle porcelain floor tiles? And so on.Like so many things in life, with tile cutters, you get what you pay for and another phrase comes to mind: ‘horses for courses’. There are three broad types of tile cutter:

1. Hand scribers and breakers
2. Manual Tile Cutters (scribe and snap)
3. Wet Cutters

The first type look like a pencil and are really just tungsten-carbide tipped steel (or increasingly, plastic) bars, or they may have a TC cutting wheel (like a basic glass cutter) and really all they can do is scribe a line in glazed and unglazed tiles. These are readily available in tile and DIY shops and are inexpensive. To be honest, unless you are simply fixing some small, thin basic wall tiles, then you will not get far with one of these as after scribing the line, you then need to break the tile along the scribe and anything over 7 or 8 mm can be quite tricky to the untrained. Don’t bother with placing the tile over matchsticks, it is far easier to simply hold the tile at arms length and place you thumbs on the back of the tile and ‘snap’ it away from you (like a certain, chocolate, twin-biscuit bar that you may enjoy when taking a break).

Thin cuts, of say less than 2 cm can be harder with this method as there is not much leverage available to the fingers. Another popular DIY tile cutter, resembles a pair of pliers with a winged-anvil at the end. This anvil can be used instead of the hands and can handle most basic tile-cuts.

However, if your project is going to involve more than just a kitchen splash back then you may well be better investing a little bit of money to get something more substantial. I should also point out, that these ‘pencil’ and ‘pliers’ cutters cannot help with cut-outs for switch sockets, ‘L’ shapes and the like.

You could consider a manual scribe & snap type cutter. Typically these have either two rails or one central bar, along which a scribing handle is pulled, or pushed. There are a variety of breaking devices and anvils, some built into the handle, others use a secondary device. There are many to choose from with prices starting from around as little as £10 (for a small, plastic one) up to several hundreds of pounds for a metal, professional quality one, capable of cutting very large floor tiles. If your budget is sub £50, (and your tiles are not too large) then you will find a wide selection of these machines in any large DIY store or tile shop.

With the trend today to tile ever-larger areas, particularly so in stone, and also the growing tendency for these tiles to be in a larger format, then it may well be well be worth looking at something more professional. Again, there are many to choose from; ask any professional Tiler and most will be familiar with the following two brands: Rubi and Sigma. Typically they will favour one and not the other – I am happy using either but that is because I have experience of using them both and of having to swap and change regularly, with many people their preference comes from which ever machine they were brought up on, and got used to. They have slightly different methods of operation; let’s take a look at a couple of them:

Rubi Manual Tile Cutters

The Rubi TS 40 is one of the best-selling manual cutters in the country, its design has not changed much over the last 25 years, but it works as well today as it always has. It can take tiles up to 40 cm in length and is operated by pushing a scribing wheel, by means of a long handle along twin chrome rails. Once scribed, the operator lifts the scribing wheel clear and uses the second lever to operate the breaking anvil

Sigma Manual Tile Cutters

The Sigma cutters by contrast, operate by pulling the scribing handle towards you and then changing the position of the handle, to bring the integrated anvils into play. The anvil presses down and the sprung plates give way to reveal a central breaking bar, over which the tile snaps.

Either of these two machines will handle a wide variety of jobs, if I had to make a choice between them then it would probably be the sigma, but much of this is my personal preference for ‘pulling’ and not ‘pushing’. If the sigma style appeals but it is out of your budget, then there are a number of ‘clones’ on the market that offer much of the same performance at a lesser cost. One of the best of these would be the Raimo by Raimondi:

Raimondi Manual Tile Cutters

Well, that post was a little longer than I had intended, and I have not even started on ‘L’ shape and hole cutting, for that we need wet cutters, I will leave that for next time. Stay Tuned.

Copyright Ian Taylor and The Tile and Stone Blog.co.uk, 2013. See copyright notice above.

What Is The Best Sealer To Seal My Porcelain Floor Tiles?

April 18, 2008 / / 103 Comments

What is the best sealer to seal my porcelain floor tiles is one of the most frequently asked questions I hear. The answer can depend on the finish of the porcelain; for example, it could be a standard, smooth finish, it could be slightly textured (like a faux slate) or heavily textured, perhaps for anti-slip purposes. However, by far the most common question I receive is in relation to ‘polished’ porcelain.

There are still some high-quality porcelain tiles out there that do not require sealing. If you are lucky enough to have one of those then you are not going to need to do too much to keep it clean and looking good. Unfortunately, more and more of the porcelain sold here is of a somewhat more unpredictable quality, at least in terms of porosity and susceptibility to sub-surface staining. If you suspect that your porcelain might need sealing there are couple of ways you can check:

1. Do a water drop test – put some water on the tile and leave it for about 20 minutes then wipe off. If there is any darkening of the surface, showing that some water has penetrated the tile, then it will benefit from being sealed.
2. You can do the same thing with oils (warm engine oil off your car’s dipstick, cooking oil etc)
3. Or, for the ultimate test, use a highly penetrative chemical like a solvent; a permanent ink marker pen is perfect – needles to say, do this test on a spare off-cut, not on your floor!

Having determined that your porcelain needs sealing, which sealer should you use? First of all, the ‘type’ of sealer you will need is known as an ‘impregnating sealer’, as the name implies, it is a sealer that penetrates the tile and lies just below the surface, acting like a safety net to contain contaminants and keep them at the surface until they can be cleaned.

There are many impregnators out there and the old adage of “you get what you pay for” is certainly applicable here. Next question is what is best, solvent-based or water-based? Well this is one of the very few situations nowadays where I would still favour a solvent based one, not because water based is not up to the job, quite the contrary,  some modern water-based sealers can out-perform the best solvents, but simply because porcelain has a very dense surface and a solvent-based impregnator will penetrate it more easily.

So, having decided that a solvent based sealer is required, ideally we are looking for a high performance one that is as kind to the user and the environment as a solvent sealer can be, so check the labels, there are some better products available these days with less pungent odours than in days gone by. However make sure work with plenty of ventilation..

What if I want to use a water-based sealer? – No problem, you can, go for a premium water based sealer; just adapt the application a little: allow a liberal quantity of the sealer to dwell on the surface for a little longer. Then rub in the sealer with absorbent cotton or paper towels, leaving the surface of the tiles dry and free of sealer residue as per normal.

Is there anyway of darkening the porcelain? – This question sometimes arises, in particular with polished black porcelain. In some cases, solvent-based impregnators do darken the tile, but only marginally. There are some enhancing sealer s that can do a very good job, provided they can get into the porcelain, I have had some success with Enhance ‘N’ Seal on black polished porcelain, making a slightly greyed-out looking tile pure black. It won’t work on every tile, so you will need to be prepared to test, and it is expensive, but you will not need much of it as it goes such a long way.

I will come back to this topic later and discuss how to pre-seal a textured porcelain to aid the grouting process.

Copyright Ian Taylor and The Tile and Stone Blog.co.uk, 2013. See copyright notice above.
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