# Forum Home Renovation Flooring  How to remove Underlay glue.

## Lamo

Hey guys,
              My wife and I have just lifted all the carpets in our house to reveal polished Cypress floor boards. The bedrooms look like they could get away with a quick clean and polish but the living room and hall have glue still on the boards. 
The carpet that we have just lifted was not glued down but I assume some time before the underlay has been. There is some black tar-like residue left in some places.
Now, is there some sort of solvent that will remove this glue or is it a resanding job?

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## lbg

You've possibly just discovered what will be the worst job in the world (depending on how much tar there is). Three techniques -> 
1. Keep going at it with the sander - you'll clog it about every 3 minutes & have to replace the belt/disc, otherwise it will just start pushing the tar around.
2. Heat Gun + Scraper + Sand - this is what I used recently and seemed to work well. The idea is to get as much tar off the boards, so when you sand it doesn't clog (as much). 
3. There is a solvent (and I forget the name, I'm sure someone will post), which works like a paint stripper. Apparently Petrol can also work?  
Either way, you would probably want to sand after removal, because it's unlikely you'll get all the tar out of the grain. I wouldn't have thought coatings would adhere to it particularly well either. 
There's plently of floor guru's in here, so they'll no doubt add more.

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## Lamo

Hey thanks for the quick reply.  
The tar is not a problem as there is only a little bit i.e. 10 square centimeters in total. The glue (what I assume to be glue) has been spread all over the floor. 
My first thought on what this may be was that someone had tried to mop the floor with some sort of industrial strenght cleaner and eaten off the top layer of varnish. I will have to post up a photo of what I mean - I don't think I am describing it very well.

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## Dusty

My guess is to use Kerosene to nullify the stickiness of the glue prior to sanding. 
As most of these glues are petroleum based the Kero quickly renders it useless, enabling you to remove the glue fairly easily.  HERE are some recent glue removal jobs I've performed using Kero to kill the glue along with a heap of sanding.

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## Lamo

OK!
The Glue is not sticky at all - it seems to be quite old. The carpet and underlay that we just lifted did not have the underlay glued down and the carpet itself was quite worn so I would guess it is well more than 5 - 10 years old.
Anyway it was easy to remove (still time consuming though) We simply soaked an area with suger soap and scrubbed it with a scrubbing brush and then scourers. Thats it. It still takes about an hour to do 1 square meter.

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## shanetorque

Carpet layers often use a latex/water mixture to stick the foam underlay to the sub floor. it helps hold it in place while the carpet is stretched but as you have found doesn't hold on forever. 
This being a possibility I'd do an adhesion test before you attempt to re coat the floor.

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