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Removing flooring adhesive

Posted: Sun Aug 29, 2010 6:43 pm
by oldbandnerd
I've been trying to remove the old adhesive left on my concrete slab floor in the kitchen to prepear it for some creamic tile. The old flooring was sheet vinyl,paper thin and cheap as hell. Everything I tried barely worked and was all very labor intesive. Acetone,paint stripper,adhesive remover and even using a small hand held sander. The chemicals barely lossened it and I had to scrap it with a scraper and it still didn't get it all up.
Quite by accident I found the best solution to getting the old adhesive up.. I was using a 3" round brass bristle brush in a drill. The kind you use for removing paint. It was working sort of ok but was very slow. I spilled some water out the glass I was drinking from on the floor and decided to just go right over it instead of ceaning it up. The brush went right through the adhesive in the area of the puddle!. SO I flooded a small area to see what would happen and sure enough it all came up easily. It's a little messy but I just clean it all up with a wet/dry vac adn wipe the baseboards down with a rag.
Has anyone else heard of this method to clean off the old adhesive ?

Re: Removing flooring adhesive

Posted: Sun Aug 29, 2010 7:51 pm
by Dan Schultz
oldbandnerd wrote:........I flooded a small area to see what would happen and sure enough it all came up easily. It's a little messy but I just clean it all up with a wet/dry vac adn wipe the baseboards down with a rag.
Has anyone else heard of this method to clean off the old adhesive ?
That stuff must be water soluble. I don't think I would want to use it to glue down flooring!