Why Is Grout Missing In My Shower?
Well hopefully your shower isn't very old, otherwise I
would recommend redoing the entire shower. We're talking about a tiled
shower of course and the grout is usually going to be installed in
between the tiles. The problem is, what causes the grout to fall out and
how do I repair it.
Well the bad news is, when the grout starts to fall out, there is
usually a problem underneath your tiles. This isn't going to be the case
every single time, but for the most part, if you're grout is falling out
in chunks, there's a good chance that water has been leaking behind your
tiles for quite some time and is now ruining the tile backer board.
If the tiled shower walls have been neglected and haven't been cleaned
on a regular basis, I recommend taking a small screwdriver and putting
it gently in between the missing grout line, while gently applying a
little pressure trying to see if the tiles around the missing grout are
loose.
If you put too much pressure on the tile, you could pop off a perfectly
good tile, accidentally. You're just checking to see if the tiles are
loose and applying a little bit of pressure, and popping the weaker
tiles off, would be a good sign that there is more to this problem then
you might have imagined.
If the tiles pop off easily, I would recommend removing the tiles in
that area. Remove as many tiles as you can pop off easily. If you find
that most of the tiles in the shower are popping off easily, you should
probably start to think about whether or not you need to replace the
entire shower.
If only a small area of tile, pops off easily and the backing board
looks like it's in pretty good condition, you can simply reattach the
tiles and re-grout the area.
Now if the tile doesn't pop off easily, you can simply clean the rest of
the loose grout out from in between the titles and regrout the area.
The biggest problem with loose tile grout, on a poorly maintained bath
tub or shower wall is the tile backing board. More than likely, this
area could be damaged and would need to be repaired. This might require
a professional to repair properly.