Why Properly Cleaned Pool Tile Never Needs Sealer

Some pool tile companies finish a cleaning by rolling or spraying a clear sealer over the tile. It looks glossy and fresh the day it's done. Ask us whether your tile needs it and our answer is no. When the cleaning is done right, there's nothing to cover up. Here's why we say that, and how you can tell the difference before you hire anyone.

What's on your tile in the first place

Ceramic and porcelain pool tiles carry a clear glaze on the face. That glaze is the smooth, glassy layer you see and feel when you run a hand across a tile. It makes the surface easy to wipe, and it's a big part of why calcium has a harder time gripping tile than it would on bare, porous material. The glaze is thin, though, and once it's gone it doesn't come back.

That's the key to this whole question. Glaze is the finish. If it's intact after the cleaning, the tile is protected the way it was designed to be. If it's damaged, no coating applied afterward truly puts it back.

Where sealer comes into the picture

Blasting is an effective way to take calcium off tile, but the result depends heavily on what you blast with. Media that is too aggressive for a glazed surface strips or dulls the glaze along with the scale. A tile with a damaged glaze looks cloudy or rough up close, and it tends to pick up new deposits faster because the smooth surface that resisted buildup is gone.

Some companies blast improperly, destroy the glaze, and then apply a sealer to cover the damage. It can look fine at first. Over time, though, the sealer yellows under UV light, and the tile you paid to have brightened ends up with an amber cast that's worse than the calcium was. Now there's a coating to deal with on top of the original problem.

In Phoenix that timeline matters. The tile at your waterline sits in direct sun all day, with more light bouncing off the water. A coating that's slightly off on day one gets worse with every summer of that exposure. That delay is part of how the practice survives: the pool looks great when the invoice gets paid, and the yellowing shows up long after.

Matching the media to the surface

The fix is simple to say and takes skill to do: choose the right media for the surface in front of you. Pool finishes are not all alike, and the approach that suits one can ruin another. We clean almost any surface, including glazed tile, natural stone or rock, Pebble Tec and brick, and each one gets its own choice of media before any blasting starts.

• Glazed ceramic and porcelain tile: the media has to be gentle enough to leave the glaze alone.
• Natural stone and rock: textured, uneven surfaces where the media is picked to clean without carving the stone.
• Pebble Tec: a textured finish where the goal is lifting scale without loosening or dulling the surface.
• Brick: a rougher, more porous material that reacts differently than glazed tile.

Choosing the media is the first decision, and we make it after looking at what's actually on your pool. The spent media settles at the bottom afterward, and we remove it with our own custom-fabricated portable pump and filter.

What to ask any tile cleaner

When you're collecting quotes, ask what media they'll use on your specific surface. Then ask whether they plan to seal afterward, and why. If the answer is that sealing is always part of the job, ask what it's covering. A company that's confident in its method can explain it in plain language, and it shouldn't need a coating to finish the work. If the answer is vague, that tells you something too.

You can also trust your own hand. Clean glazed tile should still feel smooth and glassy, like it did when it was new. A rough, chalky or cloudy feel after a cleaning is a sign that something took the glaze off.

A look at your tile a year or two after the work is the real test. Tile with an intact glaze still looks clean and still looks like tile. Sealed-over tile can show its history in the color.

Our work is eco friendly and guaranteed not to scratch, etch or damage your tile. If you're in Scottsdale, Cave Creek, Anthem, Peoria or anywhere else in the north valley and you'd like a straight answer about your pool, call (480) 818-7235 for a free quote.