Fastest/Best way to remove a glue residue on a floor (1 Viewer)

[D'Animal]

I have the challenge of renovating a 1,700sg ft showroom at one of my very good customers. This will be done in Monster Garage fashion with a time limit of about 12 hours start to finish. I will have 4 guys assisting with the renovation.


The floor is 25+ years old and consists of linolium and shag carpet that is worn down to the texture and height of of indoor/outdoor carpet. I am 99% sure the subfloor is concrete.

For the linolium I plan on using dry ice and busting the squares up for the fast removal.

The carpet hopefully will pull up but I do not know how it is glued down so it may be a challenge as well.

I have used Dad's Paint stripper to remove the linolium glue on floors before but it take awhile to soak in. Time is not on my side for this project.

After the glue residue is removed, the floor will be sanded, stained and sealed.

If anybody has any better techniques, I'm open to suggestions.

Thanks

 

[haystax]

Diamond cup on angle grinder - especially since it will be sanded and stained anyway. The glue marks may really affect the stain absorption unless they are taken care of. Any other chemicals may affect the staining as well.

I bought a dust cover for my angle grinder that hooks up to the vacuum to recover the dust, it helps but it is still a messy job. It goes very fast though.

This was the method recommended and we tried it on some areas in the basement to expose the aggregate and then stain and seal. Haven't got the time to tackle the entire project yet.

 

[AJP]

Not sure how you are applying the dry ice but your source may know someone who does dry ice (cryo) blasting - they might be able to tell you if they have had success removing this sort of glue residue. Apparently shot blasting does it but I have never seen this process - just read about it.

.. as a kid working as a concrete labourer I used to run the "IRA" jet (or so it was called) - was very high pressure water/air jet used to cut/roughen concrete surfaces before another large pour was dropped on top. It would work - but leave a heck of a mess in doors

 

[D'Animal]

AJP

Good ideas. Now that you mention it I remember reading something about dry ice blasting.

One wall of the show room is floor to ceiling glass windows so shot blasting may or may not work with the right operator.

 

[D'Animal]

Good idea on the cup grinder.

Any blemishes would add characture.

I will check into a Dust collection system for my 4" dewalt grinder.

Diamond cup on angle grinder - especially since it will be sanded and stained anyway. The glue marks may really affect the stain absorption unless they are taken care of. Any other chemicals may affect the staining as well.

I bought a dust cover for my angle grinder that hooks up to the vacuum to recover the dust, it helps but it is still a messy job. It goes very fast though.

This was the method recommended and we tried it on some areas in the basement to expose the aggregate and then stain and seal. Haven't got the time to tackle the entire project yet.

Have you started the project at all yet? If so, how did it turn out?

 

[fj40charles]

Dan,

The old vinyl floor might have asbestos. Wear a good mask.

How about using a propane torch to heat up the vinyl floor before scraping?

Sounds like alot of work in short amount of time.

Charles

 

[haystax]

Have you started the project at all yet? If so, how did it turn out?

Haven't started the grinding and staining, debating whether or not to do it before we tape/texture or after. Gonna have to pick a day and do one of those projects and neither one sounds like much fun to me.

 

[Ebag333]

You are very ambitious.

I did something similar to my house. Carpet, with the old green tile squares (like what you'd see in the 50's in schools) that were laid over what we believe are fir wood floors. We wanted to restore the fir floors, so had to remove the carpet and tiles. Carpet was a snap, tiles were glued in place with that nasty black mastic (in some places nearly a quarter inch thick it seemed like).

Lowes mastic remover worked very well, it softened the mastic and allowed us to scrap a bunch of it off. Fastest way to remove it was to scrap the majority of it off (just a quick scrape) then take a drum sander with as rough a grit as we could get and go over it. The mastic would stick and build up on the sand paper, it basically stuck to itself.

No idea if that would work the same for the glue you got down, if it's dried hard and won't soften then probably not.

 

[PAToyota]

One office that I worked at had an area remodeled and ran into issues like you describe. They brought in a vibratory scraper of some sort that they used to peel up the VCT and scrape all the residue off the concrete.

Here, like this: The Home Depot Tool Rental - Tile Stripper

 

[4XLT]

I humbly suggest looking up a rental shop for one (two?) of these. I used to rent these out in a previous life and they worked like a charm.

http://www.pearlabrasive.com/pdf/Equipment.pdf

 

[Mace]

One office that I worked at had an area remodeled and ran into issues like you describe. They brought in a vibratory scraper of some sort that they used to peel up the VCT and scrape all the residue off the concrete.

Here, like this: The Home Depot Tool Rental - Tile Stripper

Used one of these last weekend for removal of some old linoleum tile squares that my mother had in her house. Worked like a charm but did not pick up the gluevery well.

I humbly suggest looking up a rental shop for one (two?) of these. I used to rent these out in a previous life and they worked like a charm.

http://www.pearlabrasive.com/pdf/Equipment.pdf

IMHO, the best option for resurfacing the floor.

If you get both tools, you can start pilling the linoleum up and then come back afterwards and resurface the concrete. Pretty much waht the guys that are going to stain my mothers floor are doing. Except that they are going to add a thin veneer of concrete on top of the existing concrete.

 

[D'Animal]

I found out the current floor tile has asbestos so a professional floor company is doing the removal and prep. He estimates it will take 3 days to get it ready for stain.

After he is finished we will stain it and seal it and continue with the renovation.