Our house has two bedrooms in which the previous owners installed vinyl tile over wood flooring (how ironic is this: it's wood-grained pattern tile over beautiful, real wood). We want to remove the vinyl tile, then refinish the floors. The tile itself comes up without any effort at all, but there is residual adhesive still attached to the wood. I'm concerned it may contain asbestos. Assuming it does, what's the proper method for removing the residual adhesive from the wood before I refinish the floor? The Residual Flooring Covering Institute's (RFCI) guide for removing residual adhesive from wood is to remove the wood – not my preferred option.
Wood – How to remove residual adhesive that may contain asbestos from wood
adhesiveasbestoshardwood-floorvinyl-flooring
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Unless you have your heart set on using the wood floor under the old sheet goods I would cover it. As you suggest it may contain asbestos. I would use floor leveling compound, available at home centers to fill in the low spots where the old surface was removed. Then you can cover the entire floor with what ever material is suitable underlayment for your woodfloor be it floating,prefinished or solid wood.
Sometimes it takes a village. Here's a summary of what ended up working:
- The first layer of tiling came off without too much trouble by using a heavy duty paint scraper (with a slight bend to it) and a hammer. I was able to get through this in less than an hour.
- The second layer was much harder. I believe @Ecnerwal was right in that it was actually a layer of older vinyl or linoleum. This ended up coming up only with the use of a heat gun and the scraper. This took 3+ hours.
- The remaining glue (putty like material) responded well to hot water. I heated up a kettle and would put a small amount of hot water on the remaining material. I used the scraper and a piece of steel wool to remove the material, sometimes requiring two passes. I had a towel handing to wipe up the water and material.
I'm now looking at fir flooring in relatively good condition, minus a nasty gouge mark I made when first trying to remove the tiling by force.
Some other details for those reading:
- Make sure to take precautions as there may be asbestos in your flooring. Do not assume any of my steps taken were safe.
- Paint thinner, as recommended by @Ecnerwal did not have any effect
- I tried using some orange-based product to remove the glue from the floor. It had a minimal effect, took longer, and was more expensive than hot water. I didn't let it sit longer than a few hours, which may have limited it effectiveness (label recommended 30 minutes to 24 hours).
This, in the end, was really backbreaking work. Whether it was worth it or not will be more obvious once I figure out how well I can repair the gouge I made.
Thanks everyone for your help with this!
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Best Answer
First, test the adhesive. If it does have asbestos, you are stuck. If it doesn't your life is going to be easy.
Here is the reason why they recommend complete removal of the wood. Asbestos removal requires two things: Enveloping the entire area, basically making a sealed air tight work area that can be removed once work is done. This would be walls and ceilings covered in plastic, all seams tapped. Double sealed barrier for your one entrance/exit. This really isn't the deal breaker. The next requirement is... Wetting.
Any time asbestos fibers have the possibility of becoming airborne, the entire work area needs to be wetted to prevent this from happening. Can you imagine using a power sander on soaking wet wood floors? One, the wood would be destroyed. Second, you might never get to see those destroyed floors because you're dead from electrocution.
If you truly do have asbestos in the adhesive your two options are removal of the wood or encapsulating it (lay another floor on top).