lino adhesive

[molymoly]

Hi we've taken up lino tiles in our new house to lay slate tiles. We need to remove all the old adhesive from the concrete before we can do our floor. We've tried whacking it with a hammer an chipping it away with a bolster but it's taking forever, any suggestions?

[sense4all]

It is a dog of a job, but in the past I have used a steam wallpaper stripper to warm the adhesive through and make it pliable and pull it off like pizza cheese strings. Hope you don't love your fingernails or you can get a very pliable scrapper. The concrete also has to be " SOUND" or you might gouge great big holes out of floor surface. Do a little test patch to see if it will work in your case. I found kneeling on a few layers of thick double skinned cardboard was kinder to your knees and could be chucked away afterwards.

[Billy_Bones]

I found that softening the adhesive with a hot air gun (the type designed for paint stripping) ,then lifting it with a scraper, works a treat - and no condensation - coz there's no steam...

[naz_nomad]

If it's stuck that well to the floor, just slate over it...make sure you fet any loose adhesive up though

[buildersmate]

I guess you are using a cement-based floor adhesive, so can't put that down over the existing adhesive? The hot-air gun sounds a good idea - never tried it - you can buy a cheap but serviceable gun from Maplin Electronics. Or you could put self-levelling compound down to get the surface flat enough and primed so the cement-based adhesive will stick to it. Self-levelling compounds are quite good at sticking to all manner of uneven but sound substrates.

[sense4all]

The only down side with a hot air gun is that they have a shorter running time than the steamer, so make sure that you read how long you can run it , and then the time you have to rest the gun before you can use it again. Just a "heads up" before you splash the cash.