Removing Carpet Padding From Concrete Floor

Carpet padding adhesive can be a concern for any homeowner taking steps to update his home.

Removing carpet padding from concrete floor.

On a concrete floor the carpet pad is often glued into place. To remove them use a floor scraper. You may want to remove the carpet padding yourself but if you re hiring a professional to work on your wood floor it may be better to have that person remove the padding as well. If you just removed carpet and now you need to remove the carpet glue from a concrete floor here are some tips the methods below are easy ways for preparing your concrete floors for laminate tile or hardwood you can try the environmentally friendly products or use the proven but toxic chemical glue strippers.

Scrub the concrete with the scouring pad until all the glue is removed. Long handled scrapers cost about 30 at home centers. Dissolve the padding with chemical cleaning. Cut the pad into strips and roll it up just as you did with the carpet.

Your first measure is to manually remove as much glue as you can with a scraping tool while this may not banish every last bit of carpet glue from the floor. Remove the 3 foot wide carpet sections from the tack strips by shaking the carpet in a back and forth motion while pulling it up from the surface of the floor. Carpet glue is an incredibly strong adhesive designed to fix rolls of carpet to concrete floors. When removing carpet especially old carpet you never know what to expect when you get down to the padding.

Start with a scraping tool. Roll the carpet into easily manageable sections as you pull it up revealing the carpet padding beneath. Use pliers to pull padding staples when removing carpet from stairs. When you ve torn off all the carpet and pad pull out all the staples with pliers.

It will chemically soften the adhesive for quick and easy removal. If there is still more glue left or if the above methods fail it is time to use an eco friendly adhesive remover. If you are faced with removing carpet padding that is stuck to your cement floor don t give up hope quite yet. Tough spots might require a power oscillating tool.

Though incredibly effective this specialty glue is also notorious because it leaves behind sticky residue that is hard to remove with traditional removal methods. On a concrete floor the pad is glued in place so big chunks of pad will remain stuck to the floor. Rinse the concrete well with clear water afterwards.