Someone please help us get this old vinyl flooring up!

GSDog

Hi all.

I'm in the process of renovating a house and the kitchen floor is about a 20 year old vinyl and is well and truly stuck down. I have no idea what glue they used to lay this but it's ridiculously stuck. We have spent hours at it with spades, tried heating it up with heat guns, blow torches, etc. Nothing seems to work well at all.

The only thing that briefly worked was using a hammer drill with a wide chisel bit. However, it's still incredibly difficult and is taking us hours, not to mention has blunted the chisel bit and nearly destroyed the drill. It also isn't able to get much of the glue off, which I'm guessing is very important as we're planning to lay natural slate tiles on it.

Here are some pictures (apologies for the poor quality):








Does anyone have any advice on how to get this damn floor up?

Does it matter if there is still some of the adhesive/glue left over if we tile onto it? Or does the adhesive need to be fully removed first?

Any help would be appreciated.

keystone

Floor scraper, lots of elbow grease, tile over the top of any remaining glue using a polymer modified flexible addy.

Cheers

Gloomendoom

Yes, a long handled (5') floor scraper is the way to go... and the elbow grease.

It's a horrible job.

muckybutt

Were they vinyl tiles ? if so could be Asbestos risk but thats too late now as you have obliterated them !!

If it had been me....i'd have primed the floor with pva / water mix then floated the floor with self levelling flooring compound and tiled directly on top of that.

mumto2loves

hi
my oh says he would cut / score it into strips and use a scraper. he's got an electrical one,(might be worth looking into hiring one?)
he says you could do it by hand (but he wouldn't want to:p)

you'd also need to latex it if you were putting a vinyl down again.:) (so traces of old glue/ rough finish wouldn't matter)


edit - just re read and you're putting tiles down, he says you'd need to prime the floor the lay the glue thick. he also says get someone in but then he isn't a friend of martins, and would be happy to pay someone to wash our windows and uses a car wash everyweek!!!)

GSDog

Thanks for the advice everyone.

muckybutt wrote: »

Were they vinyl tiles ? if so could be Asbestos risk but thats too late now as you have obliterated them !!

If it had been me....i'd have primed the floor with pva / water mix then floated the floor with self levelling flooring compound and tiled directly on top of that.

No, it's sheet vinyl and I think it was installed around 1985 so I hope it isn't asbestos!

Is it too late for me to now prime the floor and put self levelling compound over the section which I have removed and the rest of the vinyl? I wish I had done that now but I didn't realise it would be so damn hard to remove.

macman

I had the same issue, used a heat gun to soften it and then a wall scraper, but it still took a few hours just to do a small lobby of about 2 sq m. Horrible job.

macman

Spam reported.

keystone

Its obviously sheet vinyl from the images. No it won't contain asbestos. More unecessary asbestos scaremongering around. :doh:
You must get it up. You shouldn't tile over sheet vinyl whether you prime it or not.

Cheers

muckybutt

keystone wrote: »

Its obviously sheet vinyl from the images. No it won't contain asbestos. More unecessary asbestos scaremongering around. :doh:
You must get it up. You shouldn't tile over sheet vinyl whether you prime it or not.

Cheers

Why is it Obviously sheet vinyl ? wasnt obvious to me thats why I asked !

Not unnecessary asbestos scaremongering either imo.

And why not tile over the vinyl ? I have seen it done the way I suggested many times and from what ive seen never seen any problems with doing it that way.

Seems I could'nt do owt right in my earlier comment..... op asked for advice and thats what I gave.

keystone

I apologise. It was obvious to me as much as it wasn't to you.

I think it was the asbestos thing that wound me up. Yes asbestos was used in the manufacture of 1970s vinyl flooring mainly for commercial and educational use because of its fire resistant properties. However, because of the way the flooring was manufactured such flooring presents no risk to health nor does it need a specialist conjtractor to remove it.

I suppose I reacted the way I did because the very mention of the word asbestos on this site appears to attract the "OMFG" brigade like bees round a honeypot who react disproportionately. I seem to have reacted disproportionately in anticipation of such an event.

Sorry once again.

Cheers