Hardwater and Rainforest brown marble

My wife would love to install Rainforest brown marble in our shower, including the shower floor. However we have fairly hard water which leaves deposits on the walls and floor which must be continously removed. My questions is; are we asking for trouble in installng this particular marble or for that matter any type of marble or granite. Thanks for your reply.

 

Dear Conrad:

You may even be right about your hard-water problems, but I have the tendency not to believe much in that.

In my contracting days I've seen all too many problems in shower stalls that were perceived as the consequence of hard-water but turned out to be completely different, to readily buy into that.

For what you're saying, I must conclude that you already had experienced problems allegedly related to hard-water; but I can assure you that nowhere in this country there's water hard enough that one has to continuously remove its mineral deposits from the surface of a shower stall. In the worst case scenario, one would have to remove the deposit once every couple of months or so. Beyond that, the water should be so hard that one would have to chew it before swallowing it!...

Isn't it possible that you had a shower stall with stone tiles of sorts in it, and that you had grout and/or caulk missing?... Or, perhaps, the installer felt like being “Italian” when it did your job and installed the tiles butt-joint?...

If the installation is done right and you monitor your grout lines regularly, there's nothing wrong to use the stone you have in mind. But then again, the installation must be done right, or else your “hard-water” will come into the picture again!

And, fo course, you have to learn how to take proper care of your stone. By logging into the Helpful Hints section of our website at: http://www.marblecleaning.org/helpful-hints.htm, you will be able to get the short version of our maintenance guidelines at no charge. The full version of it – a 7-page document considered by many as an industry benchmark and that includes important tips on how to install properly a stone shower stall – is available in pay-per-download format in our Educational Literature section at: http://www.marblecleaning.org/literature.htm.  

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Thank you  

Ciao and good luck,

Mauri z io Bertoli

 

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