Icky sticky yucky!

[David W.E. Roberts]

Hi,

just levered up some ancient lino tiles - I could have added yet another layer but I object to burying filth.

I now have a concrete floor with ancient icky yucky sticky adhesive.

Any tips on how to cure the stickyness or remove the adhesive?

I seem to remember some mention of sprinkling cement dust or similar, then brushing off.

Any suggestions considered :-)

Cheers Dave R

[ben]

A paint stripper/gas blow torch. :-)

[Sim C.]

I've used talc and a wallpaper scraper on similar. Would imagine cement might work too.

[Rob Morley]

Depending on the nature of the yucky goo you might find a hot-air stripper and scraper will work quite well.

[John Schmitt]

Find a Kango with a wide, toothed blade. Attack at about 30 deg to horizontal using a shop or rotten old vacuum cleaner, to remove the debris, cement dust will ruin a nice one. Put down a self smoothing compound and proceed from there.

be of some help

For large areas there are specialist machines like BlastTrac. Tried finding a website and failed.

John Schmitt

[ben]

pmsl, he wants to remove old tacky glue not break the concrete up.

[John Schmitt]

The toothed blade will simply scarify the surface, removing some concrete and the overlying adhesive, which I believe will be acrylic. If it is snot-coloured, it is acrylic, if black bituminous. Kangos are rather weedy for breaking concrete, breakers or pneumatic drills are better. For serious work a hydraulic breaker on a site machine is the answer.

John Schmitt

[ben]

So you would go out and hire or possibly buy one of these products just to remove old glue that can easily be removed with a burning process using a plumbers gas torch or paint stripper gun which most people own.

[John Schmitt]

For certain values of remove, liable to be insufficient for a really good bond. Concrete is porous, so the adhesive penetrates the concrete to a greater or lesser extent. Depending on the subsequent flooring and adhesive used this can compromise the bond badly. How many years experience analysing building adhesive problems do you have? Try calling up one of the suppliers and seeing what advice they would give. You do not need to, in fact, I just gave it.

John Schmitt

[zymurgy]

Long handled scraper is what I used :

[zymurgy]

the 'blunt' side.

Cheers

Paul.

[zymurgy]

with the 'blunt' side.

Cheers

Paul.

[David W.E. Roberts]

Tried the cement dust trick and it seems to have worked.

I brushed a small amount across the floor and the stickiness went away.

I now have cheap lino over a layer of newspaper over the floor.

Hopefully the icky sticky won't get through the cement dust and the newspaper.

The main hope was that it would prevent the newspaper sticking down and make future removal of lino and newspaper easier.

I think that eventually I will have to follow the advice about grinding the top layer off - it isn't in good condition or flat.

Thanks to all who contributed.

Dave R