Removing floor tiles is HARD WORK!

[jymbee]

The hard vinyl 12" square tiles that were installed over our concrete basement floor now need to be removed for new flooring. Whatever glue was used is proving to be quite a challenge. Best I can do with a hammer & pry bar is to chip off pretty small pieces with each whack-- with quite a bit of effort at that. Using a heat gun helps a lot but that's pretty time consuming-- having to hold the heat in place and work it over each tile for quite some time to soften them up.

I don't expect there's any "trick" to making what looks like a long, arduous job much easier but perhaps someone has found a better way to remove this old flooring?

 

[quicksandfarmer]

I've had luck dissolving the adhesive with paint thinner.

 

[jaxs]

Electric chip hammer(aka small jackhammer)with flat blade will makeum give up their milk.

 

[rswyan]

Rent an electric floor tile remover.

 

[Deere Dude]

My son did his house with a big electric jackhammer with a wide flat shovel type bit.

 

[AWSubie]

A sawzall with a scraper blade might work.

 

[TomSeller]

Electric chip hammer(aka small jackhammer)with flat blade will makeum give up their milk.

I did that once and still had a problem.

 

[two_bit_score]

Local HD rental supply store will have a tile stripper.


Mk Diamond Products Floor Scraper, 1 HP 167676 | Zoro.com

 

[Jim Shooz]

Try a spade.. worked for me

 

[sandman2234]

I was buying some stuff from a guy in Orlando on ebay, and noticed a piece of equipment with no bids, so I stuck a "starter bid" in on it, figuring the electric motor was worth $25.00. Asked the wife, and she said it was ok to bid on it, and that my sister in law was going that way and could pick it up. So I ended up buying it. I got a phone call from the wife a couple days later, asking me if I knew what that machine was called, and I said no. She said it said "The Stripper" all over it. So basically, my wife OK'd me buying a $25.00 stripper, and had my sister in law deliver it.
Darn thing set around here for a couple of years till my Pastor went to remodel his house. I told him I had a $25 stripper he could use, and according to him, it worked really great on ceramic tile floors. Then my Mom called and told me my brother was trying to pull the parquet floor out of her den, and I grabbed the stripper and impressed Mom with it. Nowadays it just sits in the garage, waiting on somebody else to need a $25 dollar stripper.
Basically it is an electric motor powered vibrating blade with a weight on wheels.
Rent one, works great!!
David from jax