Sealing Terracotta Tiles

tillson

I have purchased some new terracotta tiles and been advised to seal them with boiled linseed oil, being careful not to allow the oil to puddle and dry on the surface. The tiles are soaking up the oil like blotting paper and seem to have an insatiable thirst for the stuff. They have now had five liberal coats over several days and they are still soaking it up like the first. How many coats do they need? Is five enough?

My concern is that when I lay and grout the tiles, their porosity will cause them to soak up grout and cause staining. Do I need to keep going with the oil until they are saturated?

Thanks for any help / advice anyone can offer.

Alan_M_2

I used to fit a lot of these back in the 90's. They do have a thirst for boiled linseed oil and would sometimes take 4 or 5 coats over a period of 2-3 days. Any more than that is generally just a waste of time.

You should now be fine to grout, but test a small area first of no more than a square meter then wash as you go.

Once oiled and grouted I then used to seal it all with HG Golvpolish - but I think this has now been replaced with another product in the line up. The advantage of golvpolish was it was removeable - so if you made a mess of the floor, you could chemically strip the top coat off, clean it up and recoat it to look good as new.

Use a very coarse grout capable of fitting 25mm width joints such as Ardex C2 grout if you can.

tillson

Thanks Alan M, some useful tips there.