Removing old flooring glue from concrete

[jwith68]

Not a garage and not my own, but looking for advice on how to get old flooring glue off a concrete floor. The old glue down indoor-outdoor carpet was removed, and most all the old foam backing scraped up. However, there is a lot of old glue residue left on the smooth troweled concrete surface. The future plan is to coat the floor, either professionally, or with a DIY system. Suggestions?

 

[AlphaGarage]

Can you flood the floor with water? Some glues release pretty easy if they're soaked overnight. Build a little coffer dam and soak a test spot first. After the soak use a hefty floor scraper and scrape away. If there's any residue left over use a grinder with diamond inserts, it will get rid of all the remaining glue plus profile for the epoxy.

 

[rsanter]

if you cant use water of a chemical stripper to soften it up, then you will need a floor sander/grinder to knock it down

bob

 

[thegarageguy]

try goo-off or try this;

http://www.franmar.com/product_info.php?products_id=34

 

[AlphaGarage]

De-solve-it is also an excellent citrus based adhesive remover. Do test a bit first though.

Also make sure any chemicals you use are compatible with whatever coating you plan to apply. This is particularly important if you intend to use an acid wash.

 

[jtrace]

I would recomend renting a 17" floor buffer and a Hex-pin grinding wheel. Around here they go for about $120.00 a day for the set. I think that would work perfect for you. The rental store I used to work for carried a wheel mad by Pearl Abrasives.Hope this helps

John

 

[koolkev12]

Home Depot and Lowes sale a chemical just for that. I used it today and it works good. Let it set for about an hour and use a stiff scraper. A little labor intensive but much cheaper than renting a floor sander.

 

[jwith68]

Thanks to all for the replies - looks like I have some good ideas to work with. One thing that I am certain will not work is water. This is a basement floor, and the carpet has been wet from footing/basement drains backing up several times. This last time it was very bad, and the decision was made to get rid of the carpet. Much of the carpet was wet when we took it up, and water was squishing up out of a lot of the old foam as we scraped it up. This glue held tight after having been soaked with water for a few days.

I will look into the various removers/strippers first. There's enough of this stuff on the floor that it is hard for me to imagine that just taking a grinding wheel to it would not quickly result in a hopelessly clogged up wheel, which would get real expensive in a hurry. Unfortunately, it is also a relatively large area, probably on the order of 30' x 60'.

 

[benjamming]

MEK would work more than likely

What about Oil flo Safety Solvent from Titan Labs?