travertine cracks, mortar cracks, ideas to seal for winter to avoid freeze lifting

[Silver_2000]

Hi
I have travertine coping on pool and spa. This year we replaced all the waterline tile and plaster

The travertine is in good but not perfect shape

has some cracks in the travertine and in the grout between them

Im looking for ideas to seal the cracks, if i need to replace all the grout that's not in the cards for a few years

Thanks in advance

 

[JoyfulNoise]

Picture?

 

[Silver_2000]

 

[JoyfulNoise]

Hmmmm....looks like grout to me although many use the terms interchangeably when they are not.

I’d do this if I had the time - get an angle grinder and clean out all the cracked joints. Then get a color matched grout from your local masonry supplier and fill in all the cleaned out joints. Color matching will be the hardest part so bring a good picture of it or, if possible, a chip off the travertine tile and see how close you can get.

Shouldn’t be more than an afternoon’s worth of work once you have all the supplies on hand.

As for the chipped travertine, not much you can do about that without replacing the chipped tile.

 

[Silver_2000]

the images are just samples of the worst from around the spa, the pool also has same issue ...... Not sure Im good enough with an angle grinder and a diamond blade to not make it look worse

Was hoping for some magic elixer to spread on the cracks .... ;-)

 

[JoyfulNoise]

the images are just samples of the worst from around the spa, the pool also has same issue ...... Not sure Im good enough with an angle grinder and a diamond blade to not make it look worse

Was hoping for some magic elixer to spread on the cracks .... ;-)

As one of our construction experts is fond of saying, “Cheap is never quality and quality is never cheap...”

I’m sure there are plenty of “magic potions” out there that can be applied but I doubt any of them will last long or look good. Usually those quick fix products make things look worse and more noticeable.

I have mortar joints in my flagstone coping that have cracks similar to your travertine cracks. I’ve often thought about fixing them but came to realize that if I only tried to do a halfway job, it was going to look far, far worse. The only fix for me is grinding out the mortar joints until clean, solid mortar is reached and then use a proper mortar mix and tuck pointing trowel to fill them back in. As far as I can figure, it’s going to be a majorly labor intensive job with lots of fine detail work ... not something that could be accomplished in a day. Therefore, it’s not something I can tackle at this point and so I simply live with the cracks in the joints and try to remember that I am probably the only one in the known universe that it bothers...

 

[Silver_2000]

I agree about the amount of work to grind out the grout.

I'm mostly concerned about the occasional freeze we get in Dallas popping the travertine when water gets in cracks