Why You Should Remove the Old Adhesive Before Place New Vinyl Down

When vinyl is installed onto sub-floors it requires an adhesive to make sure it stays in place and doesn’t move about. This adhesive is supposed to be quite strong and is therefore not surprising when there is residue remaining after the vinyl is removed. Old vinyl adhesive cannot stay there and has to be removed. It is essentially a requirement for the old vinyl adhesive to be removed before the new vinyl is installed so that the new adhesive can be used effectively. Removing the old adhesive can be seen as difficult, especially when the adhesive has become harder through the years it has been placed. But removing it can make a much better subfloor for the new vinyl flooring to be placed over. You would want the vinyl to be smooth and flat, and not texture from the sub-floor showing through. Old adhesive can cause the vinyl flooring to be uneven and show the bumps and molds that it creates. This is why the old vinyl must be removed if you want to place down the vinyl perfectly. 

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The vinyl adhesive can add layers to the subfloor. If it is not removed from the sub-floor, from the previous project, it can start to cause uneven texture. If you are placing down smooth surface flooring, like dark grey vinyl flooring or black vinyl floor tiles, the last thing you would want is the sub-floor texture coming through and showing, as an outline, on the vinyl. The vinyl can be forgiving with very small bumps and crevices, as the backing layer can cushion against these. Bigger and larger imperfections will have to be dealt with before the new vinyl is placed over. 

There are different ways of removing old vinyl and which one you choose depends on the old adhesive on the sub-floor. It depends on whether the old adhesive is in large quantities and its state of it. The thickness of the old adhesive determines the amount of effort and work needed, along with the complete area of the workspace. If there is a very thin layer of the old adhesive, all over the subfloor, it can simply be sanded down, either by hand or using an industrial sander. Thicker layers require more effort as they will most likely need heavy-duty machines and chemical softeners and removers. Understand how much adhesive you are working with so that you can use an appropriate method to remove the adhesive. You wouldn’t want to remove large areas worth of adhesive using a hand sander when it can be done a lot quicker and easier with heavy-duty machines. After the majority of it is removed with a sander, a chemical softener can be used to remove the more stubborn areas. 

There are some vinyl adhesives, that when applied can be simply scraped away using a blade because they are soft and weak rather than hard and tough. Scrapping is not recommended for large areas as it is labor-intensive and will result in a lot of dull blades. Scrapping is more for areas with small amounts of weak adhesive and can be done a lot quicker when they don’t require additional force. If a simple, hand-held scrapper is not enough to remove the old vinyl and something a little stronger is needed, there is hand-held machinery that can help scrape the old adhesive away. These are stronger and do require a little manual labor but they are effective in removing adhesive that needs a little bigger nudge. These machines can vary in price are not an absolute requirement and can be a hefty purchase depending on the machine and the usage time. You should remember to get spare blades as the blades dull over-usage.

After scraping, manually or with an industrial handheld scraper, chemical adhesive softeners can be used to remove the remaining vinyl adhesive that is hard and stubborn. What makes these very popular is that they are chemical solvents that weaken and soften, hard adhesive and allow it to be easily removed from the sub-floor. It is actually very simple how it is done - the vinyl adhesive softeners are poured all over the adhesive and left to soak in. The adhesive softener can be left there for a couple of hours or overnight if you have a very thick, old adhesive you are working with. To make sure that the vinyl adhesive softener will be effective, a patch test should be done on a small area. It is best to test a small area rather than waste efforts on something that is not fruitful. This is to ensure that the softener works and it is efficient; multiple tests can be done to determine the best one. The chemical softener can evaporate and would be rendered useless if that occurs and you want it to soak in for longer. If you want to leave it overnight to soak, you can cover the soaked adhesive with a large plastic sheet. This prevents the adhesive softener from evaporating and keeps it within the old adhesive. This method would be best with thick areas of adhesive where soaking it for a few hours might not be enough.

When the adhesive has been left to soak up the chemical adhesive softener, it can be scraped away from the subfloor using a broom-like scraper. This can be said to be the easiest step out of the entirety of cleaning the subfloor from adhesive. At this point, the adhesive should come off a lot easier from the concrete and not require any effort at all. Once all the adhesive has been scraped away, allow the remaining residual softener to evaporate or you can wash it away – both work either way.

At this point, there should be no remaining adhesive left on the subfloor. However, it is possible to have some little areas of remaining adhesives left behind. This could be due to not receiving enough of the chemical adhesive softener or having enough time to soak in it. You can try to use the same softener on these areas again, and for a lot longer, so that they can easily come off. If it is residual, these can be removed using some boiling water poured all over it. After the softener, the boiling water should be enough to break the remaining adhesive and remove it from the subfloor. After this, your concrete floor should now be adhesive-free and ready for the new adhesive coat to be applied for the new vinyl installation. If there are crevices and dents in the concrete floor, which are not residual adhesive but actual holes and dents, you should level this out before you apply the adhesive as they would ruin the vinyl flooring placed above as well. Depending on the material the sub-floor is made out of, this can be done using a plyboard or with a self-leveling screed.

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