shower grout cracks

I have grout cracks in every corner of my shower where the floor meets the wall. I pointed it out during my 1 year walk through and the builder said that's a owner maintenance issue. So a few questions...

1. How does an owner prevent cracks like this? It's a guest bathroom so it gets used 2x a month when it's cleaned. More use? Less use?
2. Do I need to repair the cracks? Will water seeping in there become an issue?
3. How do I repair this? Should I just caulk all the edges of the shower?
4. Or do I just push back on the builder and make them fix this shower?

Curious who's your builder?

We also just had our one-year walk and Shea Homes fixed everything for us, including home owner maintenance issues such as grout cracks.

For grout in water areas, best practice is to use grout sealer after new installation. It's important for it to be absolutely 100% dry and for the grout to the full cured. Penetrating sealant will help to prevent water from being absorbed into the porous grout. Recommended to seal every year.

Having said that, yours looks like the initial install was poor. Its not uncommon though. Definitely would be unhappy to see that in a new house with sparing use. Regrout/repair and sealing will help, but it won't guarantee that there could be continued loosening of the material there over time that will create new cracks.

Pippi said:

Curious who's your builder?

We also just had our one-year walk and Shea Homes fixed everything for us, including home owner maintenance issues such as grout cracks.

Click to expand...

... my builder is also Shea... I guess I'll take this up again with them

I'll look into the grout sealing. Does this help prevent grout from cracking?

Yeah that looks like a poor install. I had the bottom of two bathrooms regrouted last summer. It was $300 each. I just had hairline cracks in various areas where the wall tiles met the floor tiles