Limestone Tile Haze On Bathroom Floor.......

[David Shelborne]

About 4 years ago my bathroom and shower floor was tiled with Limestone tiles. The tiles were a beautiful, natural white. They were grouted with a brown grout. The tiles were cleaned and sealed. When the job was completed we wound up with a very heavy haze over the entire project. I have tried 3 different haze removers, one of which was from the manufacture of the grout sealer. None so much as touched it.


I am thinking that the tiles should have probably been sealed prior to grouting since the tiles are porous. I am believing that the only way to remove the haze is with fine sanding. It would have to be a small sanding tool and some kind of grit that will not scratch or damage the limestone. The tiled floor always looks dirty and my wife hates it. The tiles are 1 inch to 1.5 inches in size with irregular shapes. They came in, I believe in sheets of about 12" x 12" or a little larger.

When the shower floor is wet the tiles look nice. Then the floor dries. The bathroom floor always looks bad.

A professional installer advised me that Limestone is always a pain in the patootey and that I will always be fighting it. Makes me sad to hear.
Dave

 

[Ian]

Hi Dave, welcome to the forums .

Do you know which product was used to seal the tiles in the first place? If you could post a photo of the haze, that would help too.

You can get very fine buffer/sanding pads which may do the job - but it depends on the type of sealant used. The best bet may be to contact the sealant manufacturer and send in a photo - their support departments are usually pretty good. I recently spoke to Fila (Stone Plus) and they were very helpful with advice on dealing with cleaning up a bad job (not done by me, I might add ).

Here are a couple of examples of pads you can get, if you did go down that route. I guess you're US based, so I've linked to Amazon.com:

https://www.amazon.com/ABN-4-Inch-Diamond-Polishing-Granite/dp/B01MA5LUBR/
https://www.amazon.com/Diamond-Polishing-Backer-Granite-Concrete/dp/B00C46I104/

If you do try and grind away the haze, please be sure to do a test area first, including re-sealing it.

 

[henfe]

Hi! I also have haze on my tiles. I have backsplash and i had cleaned it last month and then it happened. I used Goo Gone to clean the remainings after soap and that`s it.
Tiles became blur and the pattern is not as visible anymore.

 

[piglet11]

Limestone is basically chalk or calcium carbonate. Calcium carbonate is the scale formed in kettles in hard water areas and causes the "water marks" on the chrome taps etc. As wet limestone is always dissolving up a certain amount of calcium carbonate, my guess is the tiles themselves causing the haze. Or possibly, the sealer is breaking down in the damp. Marble is also basically calcium carbonate so might suffer the same problems.
Unfortunately, limestone tiles might not be the best choice for wet areas.
There are chemicals that will gently dissolve up insoluble calcium compounds called chelates - EDTA is the best known (ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid).
Most of these sealers are either silicone based or acrylic. Stuff like Thompson Water Seal is silicone based and you could try a little bit first (your risk), but as anyone who has used it on exposed brickwork might have seen the brickwork changing appearance as the silicone degrades in sunlight.
Polishing and resealing might be the way to go but might not be a permanent fix. Maybe it's just something you have to live with.