“I could not get the long pot life Norcross grout, so I had to get the rapid set 4 into. I am not a pro tiler, and I see that most pro tilers seem to like the rapid set, which I understand. I found it difficult to use as it was a race against time to clean off excess grout before it became really hard to remove. In many videos I watched, the tiler would leave the grout on until partially set, and then magically sponge it all off. Not what I found! I could do no more than one square metre of 610x305mmx10mm (3mm grout width) limestone tiles at a time. And as soon as the grout was in I had to quickly crack on and remove as much excess on the tile surface as possible. A thin layer of this grout is cured in 40 mins to the point that it needs scrubbing off, so I was cleaning off any excess with rag and sponge to within 10mm of the grout line as soon as I could, there’s no waiting time to let the grout cure off partially! The grout in the grout lines is fine, that behaves as expected, but watch any excess on the tile face, leave it at your peril. Other than that, the fine powder is good, and the colour is good. Next time I would get the Norcross Stop Mould with a 2 hour pot life instead of 30 mins. It would be less of a rush. Also, the usage was almost double the recommended amount which was 0.33kg/m2. I was using more like 0.5kg. Wastage was minimal, but what I failed to account for was the tile adhesive thickness which varied a lot on an uneven wall, even using backing board, and the tile adhesive not going up to the tile edge, leaving a gap. And I think I was too efficient at filling the grout lines, so it was going in beyond the 10mm thickness of the tile, filling any gaps behind. No bad thing but, I used a lot more grout than calculated using the Norcross formula. I should also note there was tile edge caps that had to be grouted, and a floor border created using narrow strips which all added to the amount required.”
