Warning: Plastic buckets make grout set way too fast

Was mixing some for my kitchen backsplash and it hardened up in minutes. The plastic heats up and speeds up the whole thing, had to waste a whole bag. Really messed up my weekend plan...

4 comments

4 Comments

black.derek4h ago

See this with a lot of modern tools. They save money but cause new problems. Your grout hardening too fast is a classic case.

alexclark1h ago

You're right about the grout example, but I see it the other way. Those old products gave you more time to work, but they often failed sooner or needed messy sealing. Now the fast setting stuff is annoying when you're mixing, but you get a tighter joint that lasts. Sometimes the new problem just replaces an old one that was worse.

blake_green271h ago

Last summer I started mixing grout with ice water, @alexclark. Gives you those extra minutes without going back to the old messy sealants.

jasonmartin1h ago

Figure that bucket gets hotter than the sidewalk in July. You're basically cooking the grout before it even hits the tiles. Next time I try that, I'll just skip the bucket and pour the powder directly into a solid block, save myself the mixing step. Modern problems require modern solutions, like using a fifty dollar bag of mortar to make a really expensive doorstop.