Carpet Removal: Tips and Tricks

During operation, any floor covering gets damaged and wears out. In addition, it can become outdated morally, as more modern and effective finishing materials constantly appear on the market. Therefore, changing the flooring today is a frequent procedure.

Why do I need to dismantle the flooring

Replacing the flooring is one of the main activities during major repairs in the house or office, and one of the stages of this event is the dismantling of the old floor. Dismantling is also necessary because it is impossible to lay the new flooring on the old one.

Otherwise, all finishing work will be reduced to zero. Indeed, a new floor covering mounted on an old one may peel off at any moment or its individual elements will become unusable.

Any floor covering should be laid on a clean, solid and level foundation.. For porcelain and ceramic tiles, high-quality adhesion of the adhesive to the base is very important, and for the laminate and parquet, the differences in the height of the screed are of great importance. The concrete base under linoleum or carpet should also be smooth, without visible bumps and depressions. The floor of the wooden boards laid on the logs also requires a smooth and strong screed on which these logs will be mounted.

Depending on the type of flooring, ceramic and stone tiles, laminate and roll materials, massive boards and parquet are dismantled. The complexity of dismantling depends on the type of flooring available and how it is mounted on the subfloor. The simplest is the dismantling of rolled materials, and the most difficult is the tiled coating.

Removing tiles from the floor

Before removing a tile from a floor it is necessary to find out on what glue it was laid, and also whether it is necessary to keep it intact in order to reuse it. If cement mortar was used to fix the tile, its dismantling without damage is impossible.

In this case, the coating can only be removed with brute force.

Floor tiles can be dismantled in three ways:

• with a hammer and chisel,
• hammer drill or hammer drill,
• metal hooks.

Removing floor tiles with a hammer and chisel

In the event that the tile was fixed on a concrete base with tile glue, it can be carefully removed with a hammer and a chisel.

To work you will need the following tools:

• a chisel with a wide thin blade. Instead of a chisel, you can use a wide spatula or a flat screwdriver,
• hammer,
• grout remover,
• a basin with water and a washcloth.

First you need to remove grout from the joints between the individual elements of the flooring. To do this, the seams are preliminarily moistened with plenty of water, and then the softened grout is cleaned with a scraper to the base. If the grout is old, then repeated wetting may be necessary to soften it.

It is useless to wet a grout from a cement composition. It is removed using a grinder with a disc for a stone. This is necessary in order to make it easier to pry off the tile, which in turn will reduce the number of chips due to mechanical removal of the material.

Where to start removing tiles from the floor - it doesn’t matter. If the walls are not tiled, then the chisel can be inserted between the wall and the tile, and then gently chop it off. With lined walls you will have to sacrifice one of the tiles on the floor. It is broken into small pieces that are easy to remove. Then, the dismantling of the remaining tiles is continued from the vacated area.

In the case when the tile is laid on glue, the surface should be moistened with plenty of water. This will soften the glue and help gently separate the coating from the base. In this case, the chisel is inserted under one of the edges of the tile and gently tap on it with a hammer. Then the chisel is moved to another place and again knock on it. Similar actions are performed along the entire perimeter of the tile until it is completely behind the floor. This process is quite time-consuming, but allows you to save the material for future use.

Tile Removal

Dismantling of the tiles is carried out with a puncher with a special nozzle in the form of a wide jackblade. This method of removing old tiles is the fastest and easiest, but does not imply its preservation for later use. The puncher removes the coating completely, splitting it into small pieces, although the principle of operation is similar to the use of a chisel and hammer.

Removing tiles with metal hooks

Metal hooks are an alternative way to remove tiles from the floor as carefully as possible. Hooks can be made from pieces of stiff metal wire or old screwdrivers. When using hooks, grout must also be removed from the tile joints first.

After removing the grout, the hooks are placed under the tile and tear it from the base. This method is best suited for the dismantling of individual elements of the floor covering that are loosely fixed to the base and require replacement.

Dismantling parquet and laminate

These types of flooring can be laid in two ways: floating or gluing to the base. In the first case, dismantling will not be very difficult. You must first remove the skirting board, and then just disassemble the floor into separate boards.

If the boards were fastened together by a lock connection, then they can be reused. When gluing the board at the place of gluing will have to break. It is somewhat more difficult to remove the boards glued to the base. They should be tucked away with a crowbar and torn from the base, breaking out at the place of gluing the seams.

Dismantling the floor from wooden boards on the logs

After removing all the boards, they begin to dismantle the lag using a sledgehammer and a crowbar. To simplify the dismantling of the boards, they can be cut in half with a hand circular saw or a jigsaw. When sawing, these tools are set up so that they can completely cut through the boards, but do not touch the concrete base under them.

Removing old linoleum

If linoleum was laid without glue, then it is removed very simply. First, the skirting board is removed, and the linoleum itself is rolled up and taken out. If linoleum is fixed on the base with glue, then it must be cut into strips with a width of about 50 cm. When strips are removed, the floor plane must be moistened with warm soapy water. It is especially good to wet the floor in the area of ​​the cuts made.

In those places where linoleum holds especially tight, a spatula should be used. After the entire coating has been removed, traces of felt and glue remaining on the concrete base should be removed. To do this, moisten the base with plenty of water and detergent and wait until it is completely absorbed. After that, the floor is cleaned with a spatula, and then thoroughly clean it from dirt and dust.

Removing PVC Tiles

For the dismantling of PVC tiles, scrapers and building hair dryers are used. First, the tile must be heated to soften the mastic on which it is fixed. Then, using a scraper, lift the tile and carefully scrape off the mastic from the base. The procedure is repeated until all tiles are removed from the floor. In conclusion, the base is cleaned of mastic residues by grinding.

Carpet removal

If plinths and trims were used to fix the carpet, then they must be separated from the wall with a chisel. After that, you should find out how the coating was fixed on the base. In the case where only the edges are glued, it should be assumed that adhesive tape was used. It can be easily removed with a solvent or spatula. After that, the coating is easily removed and twisted into a roll. In order to facilitate the disposal of used carpet, it can be cut into small strips.

If the corner of the carpet cannot be separated at a time, moisten this part of the cover with warm water and leave for a while (about an hour or two). After this time, pull the edge of the carpet. If it is easily detached from the base, it means that it was glued with water-soluble glue. To remove the coating, it must be moistened with water and left for several hours. During this time, the glue should soak and the carpet can be easily removed and taken out of the room.

In the case when the coating angle moistened with water does not separate, we can conclude that an adhesive insoluble in water was used. To dismantle the carpet glued with water-insoluble glue, it must first be cut into strips 30-50 cm wide, and then tear piece by piece from the base. When performing this procedure, you can use a device such as tear-off tack. It allows you to very tightly clamp the coating, and if you pull it, the tension increases, and raising the coating is facilitated.

At the final stage, it is necessary to thoroughly clean the concrete base from glue and coating residues. To do this, use conventional and chipping scrapers.

Removal (washing off) of paint from concrete

There are three main ways to remove old paint from a concrete surface:

The choice of cleaning method depends on the type of paint, its adhesion to concrete and the number of layers applied. Often, methods are combined, for example, the floor is first treated with a chemical agent, and then cleaned mechanically.

Mechanical way

To clean the floor from old paint mechanically, a variety of tools are used, both electric and manual. The first ones are more convenient, since they do not require the application of great physical effort from a person. They are usually used to clean floors in large rooms.

Use hand tools when necessary to clean hard-to-reach spots or a small area, as well as in the case when the paint is peeled off and leaves the surface quite easily. This tool includes all kinds of scrapers, hard brushes, spatulas, sandpaper devices.

Of electric tools, a grinder is most often used, on which a special nozzle is installed in the form of a wire brush. An alternative to a grinder is a hammer drill with different nozzles. The blade-shaped nozzle is used in the hammerless drilling mode. To choose the most optimal angle of inclination of the nozzle, you need to experiment by walking several times on the surface to be cleaned.

Special chains can be used as drill bits. The chain nozzle has 13 links with a thickness of 5 mm. The central link rotates the links located to the left and to the right of it (6 on each side). If during work from one side one link flies off, it is necessary to remove one link from the other side for balance.

Chain processing can be performed until there are three links left on each side. The advantage of cleaning with chains is that the paint flies off in pieces, and the concrete under the paint remains intact and does not turn into dust, like when treated with a wire brush or crown.

For cleaning large areas using surface grinding machines or abrasive blasting. This treatment consists in the fact that a stream of air or water is supplied to the floor surface under high pressure, into which abrasive materials are added (sand, slag, metal shot, etc.). The abrasive moves at high speed and, hitting the surface, perfectly cleans it of paint and other persistent contaminants.

But during operation, it is necessary to carefully monitor the cleansing process. Otherwise, along with the paint, you can remove the concrete layer. Carelessness when using abrasive blasting can lead to fairly extensive damage to the concrete base. Therefore, it is better to use this equipment only when the paint is removed very poorly.

The undoubted advantage of the mechanical method is its versatility. It allows you to clean the floor from paint and varnish coatings of almost all types and even such persistent ones as oil and nitro paints, thermally sprayed enamels, paints and varnishes based on various resins.

Chemical way

In the chemical method, various chemical reagents (washes) are used. These formulations contain harsh chemicals. - organic solvents and acids that interact with the paint, but do not destroy concrete, wood, metal and other materials.

The wash is applied to the surface and incubated for some time, which is usually indicated in the instructions placed on the container. The composition can be applied with a brush, sponge or roller. It is absorbed into the paint and softens it. After that, the paint can be quite easily removed from the floor with a spatula, scraper or wire brush. If the desired result cannot be achieved at a time, the procedure is repeated.

Chemical compositions most effectively cope with fairly fresh paint applied to the floor surface no more than three years ago. If the coating is older, then it is likely that you will need to process it more than once.

In most cases, a certain composition is intended for a certain type of paint. Information on this is usually indicated on the label. For example, to wash off oil paint from a concrete surface, German-made washes from Dufa Abbeizer and Docker S5 are suitable.

Thermal method

In this method, a layer of old paint is heated to a temperature at which it becomes soft and is removed with a spatula. For heating use building hair dryers, blowtorches or gas burners. This method is quite effective and allows you to quickly clean the surface, which is planned to be re-painted in the future.

But it should be noted that the use of the thermal method is extremely undesirable in enclosed spaces with poor ventilation, since paints emit toxic fumes that are very harmful to humans when heated.

The main stages of work on cleaning the floor from paint

The most difficult thing is to remove the oil paint from the concrete floor, which is absolutely insoluble in water, and when dried it penetrates quite deeply into the pores of the material. Aqueous emulsion ink is most easily removed because it lends itself well to moisture.

Regardless of the type of paint and the material of the main surface, the following procedure can be used:

• First, remove as much paint as possible with a spatula.
• then the surface must be heated and the spatula applied again,
• the temperature effect is gradually increased and continues to work with a spatula,
• a suitable chemical agent is applied to the heated surface and a spatula is used again,
• upon completion of cleaning, the entire floor surface is carefully sanded with large emery cloth.

Depending on the state of the paint and the surface, each of these steps may be the last. It is not worth neglecting two finishing operations - cleaning with a mild solvent and final polishing.

Precautionary measures

When dismantling any gender, you should take care of your own health and be sure to use personal protective equipment - Overalls made of thick fabric and with long sleeves, gloves, a respirator, goggles. Before proceeding with the removal of the flooring, make sure that no electric wires, pipes for water or other utilities are laid under it.

When using a chemical method for removing flooring, it must be borne in mind that the use of various chemical compositions is associated with saturation of indoor air with vapors of toxic substances. The same substances are released during the heat treatment of the old coating. In addition, some elements of building hair dryers and burners are heated to a very high temperature, so careless touching them can cause severe burns.

The mechanical method of dismantling is usually accompanied by high dustiness and scattering of sharp fragments of the old floor covering. In addition, the mechanical method uses various electrical equipment. The use of such equipment requires strict adherence to safety rules in order to avoid electric shock or fire due to short circuit.

Electric equipment must be connected to the power supply only with a protective-disconnecting device, the plug-in connection of which is equipped with a protective-grounding contact. The health of this device must be checked before connecting the equipment. When the disconnecting device is activated, it can be turned on again only after eliminating the malfunction of the equipment used.

It is also necessary to check the integrity of the insulation of conductive wires and protect them from contact with hot objects, from friction against sharp corners and sharp bends. When working, make sure that various foreign objects do not fall into the working area. Work with the equipment is not allowed in case of increased vibration, suspicious knocking or smell. Нельзя также использовать электроинструмент с трещинами в элементах его корпуса или с ослабленным креплением рабочих органов.

Стоимость демонтажных работ

Стоимость услуг по снятию напольного покрытия зависит от сложности проводимых работ. The degree of complexity of dismantling is determined by the type of old flooring. The dismantling price is calculated based on the type of coating and the total area of ​​the room.

Estimated cost of flooring dismantling services:

The method of dismantling the flooring depends on the type of flooring. If the dismantling of the old floor is not given due attention, then it is quite possible that such a situation will arise when repairs will have to be carried out again.

When choosing a method for cleaning the floor from paint, a specific situation should be taken into account, since in some cases it is not possible to use any of the existing methods. For example, mechanical dust generates a lot of dust, so it is not recommended to use it in rooms with high cleanliness requirements.

When using the thermal method, special care should be taken to operate a hairdryer in the vicinity of electrical wires and other flammable materials. The use of chemical washes is associated with the evaporation of organic solvents that contribute to the accumulation of toxic substances in the room, so it should be well ventilated.

One way to remove old paintwork from the floor is shown in the video: