Glue on basement workshop floor

I just moved into a house and the previous owner had finished the basement. My first job was to remove the ceiling, interior walls and carpeted floor. When I removed the carpet there was a rubber padding beneath it and it had been glued down. I took up the padding but there is still a lot of glue on the floor. The shop is about 22' x 24'

I bought a bottle of solvent that is supposed to help remove the glue but the instructions say to use a 4" scraper to scrape up the glue. That could take weeks of part-time working, even if the glue comes up nicely. I also heard people just use hot water to soften the glue. Haven't tried anything on it yet.

My first question is, does anyone have experience in removing glue from a concrete floor so that it can be painted, and do you have any suggestions.

As an alternative, does anyone have any suggestions/experience with using something else on the floor? Maybe gluing a linoleum down. It would be soft on the feet and easy to sweep but I'm not sure how it would hold up.

Another thought is maybe I should cover the entire floor with plywood and seal the seams. If I did that I think I'd have to glue it down and I'm not sure how easy it would be to take up if I move. Maybe if I move I can just throw some cheap carpet over the ply and be done with it.

Any thoughts would be appreciated

Reply to
Ron S
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I like the idea of the scraper, myself. Go for it. Tom

Reply to
tom

Scrape up as much as you can without killing yourself and throw some cheap lammy floor down. You ~might~ want to use the underlayment to smooth over the minor humps. Beat it to death and when you move throw some more down. Or not. I've seen it for less than a buck a sq.ft.

RP

Reply to
RP

Don't know much about scraping old glue off of a concrete floor, but you might as well get used to cursing the previous owner's ingenious approaches to home improvement. I don't know how many times I've dug into something and found myself saying - "WTF were they thinking, and how am I gonna get around that? "

Reply to
d.williams

------------------------------------------- My first thought would be to freeze the glue with "Dry Ice" (Frozen CO2), then chip the frozen glue loose with the 4" scraper.

You want to try this with a small block of "Dry Ice" since you are depriving the test area of oxygen to breath.

Can probably buy a couple of pounds of dry ice from an ice cream street vendor if you have one where you live.

If successful, you can then rent a oxygen bottle respirator and finish the job.

Lew

Reply to
Lew Hodgett

You can try a scraper blade on one of the Fein MultiMaster knock offs:

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you can't try dry ice a heat gun may be useful to soften the glue.

Reply to
Nova

In article , Ron S wrote: [...]

Yes.

Forget solvents -- expensive, smelly, hazardous, and (IME) not particularly effective anyway. Use a heat gun. This may be smelly too, and depending on the type of adhesive, possibly hazardous as well, so make sure the area is well ventilated. A chemical-filter respirator is a good idea, whether you're using heat or solvents, but at least the heat gun isn't going to produce potentially explosive vapors.

Reply to
Doug Miller

"Ron S" wrote

Yes, my suggestion is to leave it there. Scrap what you can with a 6" ice chopper and long handle, leave the rest.

I put down engineered hardwood. Give the use you have, cheap laminate would work well.

Reply to
Ed Pawlowski

On Mon, 10 May 2010 13:05:33 -0700 (PDT), Ron S wrote the following:

Bingo. My 2-car shop was also that size and condition when I moved in. I tore out the pineywood shiplap on the garage door, took up the carpet, and found lots of glue down there. It was installed on top of the -sealed- floor, thank Crom.

I used no solvent for the first go-round with it. I bought the industrial floor scraper from HF (can't find it online in the new site, but it was an 18" handle on a 5" wide razor blade set at a 15 degree angle. Worked just fine. or try one of these

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or this
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I used an old 1-1/2" wide MAC gasket scraper (like this)

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my poly carving mallet
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the tougher areas. That saved my wrists. BUY ONE!

I think it took about 6 hours total, less than a day, definitely.

And I then used a lacquer thinner wash and painted it with pure white porch and floor paint. I love how it brightened up the shop, and dropped teensy parts are -much- easier to find now.

You'd still have to scrape it within an inch of its life for lino.

That's the problem. It costs lots of money in the first place, you have to semi-smooth the floor anyway, and then you're left with a problem when you move. Scraping it isn't really that bad, trust me.

TIP: use a thick pad under your feet, legs, and butt. That concrete drains the heat right out of them and you tire quickly otherwise.

Relax and get some neighbor kids to help. Buy cookies, milk, and a bucket of ice cream and make it a party.

Alternatively, a case of beer draws much quicker workers from college (or HS, if you dare.)

-- You will find that the mere resolve not to be useless, and the honest desire to help other people, will, in the quickest and delicatest ways, improve yourself. -- John Ruskin

Reply to
Larry Jaques

As you will end up scraping something, do yourself, your knees, and your back a favor - buy the Long Handled Scraper. Broom handle long. Typically available at any of the big box outlets in a six inch scraper width.

Reply to
Lobby Dosser

Hire a concrete grinder ,similar to the helicopters they use when laying fresh concrete floors . Difference is they have blocks of abrasive instead of the blades and will scour the top surface of the floor , then you may have to just hand scrape the corners where you can't get in with the grinder.

Will probably take an hour or so to do 99.9 % of the floor.

Reply to
Kevin(Bluey)

Great idea. I had thought about renting a floor sander like they use for hardwoods, and figured I'd use a lot of sandpaper. Just looked at the local rental and I can get a grinder for a day for $90. I'm going to try the scrapping method and see where that gets me first. My biggest concern is that with scrapping, if I miss an area I'll know it because the floor paint wont stick. I guess if that happens I could always rescrape it and then repaint that area. But having the grinder as a backup plan works.

Reply to
Ron S

No kidding on that. There's not a lot that they did but what they did they did poorly. They had a drop ceiling in the basement and when they ran electric they just laid the romex on top of the ceiling tiles, so that should tell you their idea of "home improvement". Plus there's also at least 2 breakers with multiple wires going to them. Many more half-a$$ed solutions that I will have to go around and fix. But after renting for 5 years it's good to have projects again :)

Reply to
Ron S

On Mon, 10 May 2010 23:22:20 -0700, "Lobby Dosser" wrote the following:

Those can work OK, too, but I foudn myself on my butt most often. The knee pads slid out from under me until I put the pad down and my back ached from using the long-handled floor scraper, which didn't work as well as the shorter jobs. The shorty and poly mallet were my best weapons against bumps that day. I'd switch sides, work between my legs, and work on my knees for a short while.

-- You will find that the mere resolve not to be useless, and the honest desire to help other people, will, in the quickest and delicatest ways, improve yourself. -- John Ruskin

Reply to
Larry Jaques

There's also one of these:

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Reply to
Nova

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that'd do it!

Reply to
Lobby Dosser

RE: Subject

Got to thinking about this some more.

Rather than use "Dry Ice" (CO2), a better approach would be liquid nitrogen.

It's inert, pourable since it's a liquid.

Once frozen, the glue should crack and chip loose.

Lew

Reply to
Lew Hodgett

Use with *lots* of ventilation.

From:

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"As liquid nitrogen evaporates it will reduce the oxygen concentration in the air and might act as an asphyxiant, especially in confined spaces. Nitrogen is odourless, colourless and tasteless, and may produce asphyxia without any sensation or prior warning.[7] A laboratory assistant died in Scotland in 1999, apparently from asphyxiation, after liquid nitrogen spilled in a basement storage room.[8]"

--Winston

Reply to
Winston

------------------------------------- My previous post addressed the safety issues.

Lew

Reply to
Lew Hodgett

On Tue, 11 May 2010 20:01:39 -0700, "Lew Hodgett" wrote the following:

...Spalling the concrete horribly in the process. Pass.

-- You will find that the mere resolve not to be useless, and the honest desire to help other people, will, in the quickest and delicatest ways, improve yourself. -- John Ruskin

Reply to
Larry Jaques

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