Timber flooring options..

[Pikey]

Just came across this forum recently and have been getting heaps of good advice. I have just moved into my first home and ripped up some dodgy old slate covering a suspended cypress pine floor but there is a thick black residue left from the matting used under the cement tile adhesive. Has anyone come across this stuff?? I want to sand and polish the floor but i am not sure if it will work with this black tar everywhere. I tried sanding a patch with a little orbital and got nowhere. Is there something that can be used to remove this stuff cause i reckon it will just clog up a belt sander in no time.

Cheers

Pikey

[UteMad]

Ripped up slate today same tar and mat

Will discuss later have to get back to my cookin

cheer utemad

[UteMad]

Hi Pikey

I ripped up the same thing today...Slate with the black mesh and tar stuff off cypress pine floor.... If you pull it up carefully you'll have an unmarked floor just covered in tar... We ran a concrete scraper up and down the boards with the grain to remove excess tar and matting and also find the nails they hold the mat down with... Once this is all done you can have it sanded..It will prob cost a little extra cause they'll do a few belts on the tar before sanding the floor but will come up fine... We aren't polishing this one but are putting a new floor over it and half the house


Funny that you should ask the same day!

cheers utemad

[mixin]

I had my floors done the other week, and I'm very happy with it.

That company has a website, and in one section it shows the exact scenario you've got - the tar under tiles.

http://www.getagleam.com.au/before&after.html

I would recommend them to anyone in the Illawara or Southern Sydney suburbs. They were on time, did exactly what they said they would, and stuck to the quoted price.

The attention to detail & finish is second to none, and everyone who has seen our floor has commented how good it is.

We had polished floors in the last house, and a lot of friends & rellos have them too, so I've got lots of other examples to compare mine to.

[Pikey]

Thanks guys, that's a funny conincidence utemad...! I'll give the concrete scraper a go and then maybe get a professional floor sander to have a look at it. The missus wants a floating floor or overlay so i'll consider that too, but i think even then it will need a rough sanding beforehand.

Cheers.

[tomato]

hi pikey,

we also ripped up our floors and found a thick tar residue stuck to the boards. We used paint stripper, doing a patch at a time allowing the stripper time to work and then painstakingly using a scraper to get it all off. Sometimes it would take a few goes in areas where it was very thick. We only had a few metres so it wasn't too bad.

[Mcblurter]

Not sure if it would work, but we used turps on vinyl tile adhesive, not sure if it would work on tar? It made the adhesive like hot chewy so you can imagine the difficulty scraping it off!! Worked out well though and saved money on polishing as didn't need as much sanding.
Cheers
McBlurter

[Larry McCully]

When we want to remove tar from a existing timber floor we use thinners or a solvent cleaner purchased from floorsanding suppliers. . We then use a 10mm nap paint roller attached to a pole so we can roll on a coating of solvenrt cleaner standing up. I havent tried turps, but turps may do a better job than solvent cleaner because tar is petrolium based and so is turps, Go to the harware store and buy a floor scraper and as utemad said , scrap in the direction of the grain. This will remove 90% of the tar and the floor sander will get the rest with his machine.

[Jenks]

I was told recently that the when the tar was scraped off with lots of tuurps it gave the boards the distinctive "baltic" colour. It was called "baltic Pine" and the rest is history.
I actually tinted turps with a little tar (bitumen sealing compound) to colour some radiata boards to match the "baltic" ones in a room. Looked a treat...