should I seal/stain our grout around tile?

[ssmith]

About to move into our new home. I am wondering if you all have had your grout Sealed and/or stained? Why or why not?

Did you hire anyone to do it and who are they and how could they be contacted?

[village dreamer]

you seal the grout and tile, it will help slow mold and mildo. do it your self home depot,i just pick some up $50 for 1/2 gal.. spray on wipe off.

[gerryann]

I believe that you must wait a year due to new home warenty....

Might be wrong, but I was told this.

[jnieman]

I believe that you must wait a year due to new home warenty....

Might be wrong, but I was told this.

I have been told in the past this also that it voids your warranty if you seal it before the first year is up. Don't know if this is still the case. Worth a call to the Home Warranty Dept. first.

[tommy steam]

When you move in you will be given a walk through by the builders superintendent. He will give you a rundown about the home. He should be able to answer any questions you have.

[Waverunner]

We too heard the rumor that it voids your warranty. We recommend that you verify this information. What we were told at the time we settled (12/2013) was that sealing your grout doesn't void the warranty but that they will not guarantee that the sealed grout will match if you have a future warranty repair (i.e. fixing cracked grout lines). Knowing this, we decided to proceed and have the grout sealed anyway.

We did though have a less than satisfactory experience with the grout sealant company we chose. (It is not the one that has previously replied in this thread.) The vendor/installer in our case "slopped" a concrete sealer into the grout lines and proceed to wipe the overspill onto the ceramic tiles. The product was made for sealing driveways and such, and although it would work for sealing grout, which is technically a concrete, it was not to be applied on finished tiles. We had swipe marks across the tiles and it left the tile tops looking permanently dirty. We also had him do the grout lines in the bathrooms. He completely coated the small tiles in the master bathroom and the concrete product he used was not meant to be used in wet places. The company (Behr) that made the product he used, does not make a remover. Even though he touted how wonderful the "after" look was, we let him know that day of our dissatisfaction. He offered to come back and remove it or clean it. He showed up the next day with a bucket, a mop, and a helper and said he would clean it up with "Goof Off". At this point, (and after a lot of research the previous evening on our part), we had no confidence that he could fix this problem and we ask him to leave.

We learned that you have to really do your homework when hiring, and perhaps supervise the entire time (we had an empty house, so we did not), and stop the work early if you don't like how it is being done. (I have sealed tile before and did not want to do the work again myself, but it was more time consuming to fix it in this case.) My contractor only had the product in his applicator, so I never saw what it was (concrete sealer), until after the job was finished. Reading the label first, would have made me ask a lot of questions, and perhaps not allow him to apply it to our floors.

The bottom line was that we finally found a chemical that would remove this, first off the Master Bath shower floor and then the rest, which was a painstaking process and took many days, that we had originally planned to be doing other things. This grout sealing company had/has good reviews on this site.

I still believe that it is a good idea to seal grout. If you don't do the job yourself, spend the time doing extra homework on the contractor and the product they use.