Dick:
This is not nearly as difficult a job as you're probably thinking it is.
Please meet the Crain Model 700 electric floor stripping machine:
[image:
formatting link
It's probably the most popular floor stripping machine in the world.
Phone around to any of the carpet retailers in your area and ask to speak to the installations manager. Ask the installations manager who sells flooring installation supplies in your area, and whether or not they rent floor stripping machines. If they do, they'll probably rent the Crain 700. And, yes, they will rent to you, and if they don't Home Depot will probably have these available for rent too.
Quite honestly, if these are either 12 inch square vinyl asbestos tiles or 9 inch square asphalt tiles, stripping those tiles off the whole area you're talking about shouldn't take more than 3 or 4 hours using a rented flooring stripper.
Once you get the tile off the floor, the best product I know of for removing the black glue holding it down is a product called "Oil Flo" or "Oil Flo 141" both made by Titan Labs of Sunnyvale, California.
[image:
formatting link
I've used Oil Flo to remove asphaltic adhesive, and it does a good job, but I've never used Oil Flo 141, which I understand is formulated specifically for removing black asphaltic vinyl tile adhesive (commonly called "cut back" adhesive). You can do almost as good a job by:
- dissolving the old adhesive in mineral spirits,
- mixing a detergent like Mr. Clean or Simple Green into the dissolved adhesive,
- adding water to emulsify the mineral spirits,
- and then vaccuuming up the liquid mess with a wet/dry vaccuum cleaner.
To my knowledge, both Oil Flo and Oil Flo 141 are simply a detergent (like Mr. Clean or Simple Green) mixed with a hydrocarbon solvent (like mineral spirits).
Finally, about the asbestos issue, and some people might not believe this, but did you know that the airborne asbestos levels in the parks around San Fransisco were measured to be 50 times greater than the OSHA would allow in a workplace without the employer providing protective respiratory equipment to the employees?
It's true. Asbestos is one of the most common rocks in the Earth's crust, and there are places where outcroppings of asbestos bearing rock come to the surface, making regular exposure to airborne asbestos fibers inevitable. Any construction project that disturbs that asbestos bearing rock puts asbestos fibers into the air.
Essentially all of the bedrock in California is asbestos bearing. Much of it is in the form of a rock called "Serpentine". Serpentine rock was used to make the gravel roads in the state parks around San Fransisco, and when cars drove over those gravel roads, the car tires would grind the Serpentine stones against each other creating clowds of airborne asbestos fibers. But, this was before Mesothelioma started showing up in people who worked in the asbestos industry, so people at the time thought nothing of it. California has since passed laws that require that the gravel used to make gravel roads in that state have a Serpentine content of less than 0.05 percent (IIRC).
You should also know that until recently (I believe it was 2000 or so), the USA was importing brakes shoes and disk brake pads made from asbestos from China. Apparantly, a baby squabble erupted between different branches of the government as to who had jurisdiction over imported auto parts. No one wanted it. So, until about the year 2000 the US was importing asbestos brake shoes and brake pads from China while banning the use of asbestos in the same products manufactured in the USA. Go figure.
Did you know that the bedrock around the Great Lakes is all asbestos bearing rock? Rain erodes that rock and washes asbestos into the rivers and streams that feed the Great Lakes. Duluth, Minnesota gets it's drinking water from Lake Superior, and the citizens of Duluth swallow about 3000 asbestos fibers with every glass of tap water they drink.
All of this information was on the OSHA's web site before they took it off. And, if you don't believe me, read the "Asbestos News" section of the Mesothelioma Center's website here:
'Mesothelioma News Center | Latest in Asbestos & Mesothelioma News'
formatting link
The Mesothelioma Center appears to me to be a web site put up by some ambulance chasing lawyers who want to represent you if you've contracted mesothelioma. The problem is that asbestos-related lung cancers can take up to 50 years to show up after you're first exposed to asbestos, so it's impossible to tell where and when a person actually contracted the disease. And, without being able to prove that, all you have is a hefty lawyer's bill, and the disease.
If you ask me, the reason why people in San Fransisco are living to ripe old ages and we aren't seeing auto mechanics that specialize in brake and clutch replacement all coming down with mesothelioma is because we've been living with asbestos in the environment for the 3 million years we've been evolving from apes, and during the millions of years before that during which the apes evolved from crawling fish, and so we've acquired some resistance to it. But, we're all different and so some of us are more resistant to it than others. And, of course, we're all exposed to different amounts of asbestos depending on where we live and where we work.
But, the bottom line here is that asbestos is abundant in the Earth's crust and erosion happens, and that means we're all exposed to asbestos to some degree every time we go outdoors.
Hope this helps.