If the old carpet comes out, you should also remove the carpet adhesive. We'll show you how.
Photo: iStock / simazoran
carpet out, new flooring in: Those who renovate often have to struggle with adhesive residue, because old carpet adhesive is often difficult to remove. Whether it's home remedies or the right tools - with these tips you can remove carpet glue without damaging the flooring underneath.
Removing dried, old carpet adhesive is one of the most difficult methods a handyman will face. But there are still tips and tools that make it easy to work with adhesive residue.
Of course, the surface under the carpet is important: is the carpet located on a parquet floor or any other type of wooden floor, and if the floor under the carpet will be visible later, you should of course proceed gently when removing the old carpet.
You can remove carpet glue with a spatula - but there are also easier ways.
Photo: iStock / simazoran
First off with the old carpet
Carpet is glued with adhesive strips, water-soluble glue or water-insoluble glue or synthetic resin. Wet a corner of the carpet. If the carpet comes off well and is not stuck with adhesive tape, you have water-soluble adhesive. Then the carpet can be made wet and removed easily. Synthetic resins, on the other hand, are stubborn and annoying.
Use the cutter to cut the old carpet into strips 50cm wide and tear them out with a carpet claw. Check what type of covering is under the carpet. This also depends on which tool you can use to proceed and remove adhesive residue.
Before you remove the carpet adhesive, the old carpet must first be removed. A carpet knife will help you here.
Photo: iStock / AndreyPopov
Remove carpet adhesive mechanically
Scraping, grinding or milling: Mineral substrates such as Screedor concrete is robust and one or the other sanding taste usually doesn't bother either. You can therefore peel off unruly carpeting from the outset with a so-called stripper. These very heavy electrical devices are available in different sizes to borrow or buy. As a kind of engine chisel, they clear away a lot, but often also leave scratches.
Therefore, only smaller and therefore lighter devices can be used for wood. There are correspondingly smaller devices for the peripheral areas, as the large ones are only suitable for surfaces.
However, strippers often only remove the carpet, not the carpet adhesive. Sometimes you are lucky and the dried glue just lies around crumbled or comes off with a hard broom or a wide spatula and can be swept away. But carpet glue is usually much more stubborn and not so easy to remove.
Can you just sand away old carpet glue?
Disc Sander, or Floor Sander: These tools are worth a try if you're looking to remove old carpet glue - unfortunately, they don't always work. In any case, ventilate the room well and wear a dust mask as it is a dusty affair.
Remember, however, that the fast rotating abrasives also generate heat and can make the adhesive residue viscous. In unsealed floors, the resulting tough and sticky mass can penetrate the open pores and also clog the sandpaper or other abrasives and make them unusable. Therefore, you have to expect quite a high consumption of sandpaper and possibly let the tools run more slowly.
Are there home remedies for removing carpet glue?
soak the glue residue with water and washing-up liquid and let everything work for a good half an hour. Dish soap is a tried and tested household remedy for most cleaning tasks and is also effective at soaking old wallpaper residues. After the exposure time, in the best case scenario, you can scrub or scrape off the adhesive residue without any problems.
Hot air as a home remedy
What works with stubborn adhesive residues from labels often also works with carpet glue: hot air from a hot air blower on a low setting or a hair dryer. The hot air is supposed to soften the glue.
the composition of old carpet adhesives is usually unknown and it cannot be ruled out that harmful gases are formed, especially when the air is too hot. If the floor is not sealed, viscous glue can clog the pores and you can hardly get rid of the remains.
Leave old carpets lying around as impact sound insulation?
Sounds tempting: You often find the tip to simply use an old carpet Impact sound insulation for the following toppings. This saves you the hassle with the adhesive residue. This should work if the carpet is glued over a large area and not too high.
That may sometimes be with Laminate or parquet even work technically, but usually the physical properties of such a covering sandwich are not nearly as good as the coverings and materials intended for it. From a hygienic point of view, old carpeting is a disaster and a real ecosystem for House dust mite sand other small animals.
You don't want that under your new flooring and manufacturers of parquet and laminate explicitly advise against it.
Carpet on carpet or PVC on carpet do not hold up well and the resulting floor covering can get so high that the door frames have to be shortened when laying. So ignore such tips and get rid of the carpet before you install the new flooring.