One of my regular customers recently had a fire. The original 60 year old oak parquet flooring was ruined on the entire first floor from the water used to put out the fire.
The original parquet flooring was set in mastic overtop of a concrete slab. The concrete slab is above grade. The floor is 9″ x 9″ alternating squares. Each square consists of four 2-1/4″ x 9″ tongue and groove boards.
The insurance adjuster allowed $10.00 a SF to remove the old floor and install a new floor. This sounds pretty low to me.
I removed a few test boards and the old mastic has a firm enough grip that the wood was splitting while being removed. The old mastic is a minimum of 1/8″ thick. I have removed floor mastic with a floor grinder with scraper blades attached. I have also used mineral spirits. Are there any other suggestion for removing mastic?
I am also looking for suggestions on pricing for removing the parquet flooring and pricing to remove the mastic. There is about 750 SF of flooring.
I was told by a flooring contractor that you can no longer install parquet flooring overtop of concrete using mastic due to the instabality of the wood. Is this true? If it is , what are my options for the new floor?
Does anyone know the replacement value of the old floor? It seams like it would be very labor intensive to install, sand and finish this type of floor. How much would it cost to install a floor like this in todays pricing?
Thanks
Replies
What about one of those machines thats about the size of a drum sander, and has a blade on the fromt for removing tile, vinyl etc?
Mike
I've never done it, but I understand an old trick for removing mastic is to use dry ice to freeze the mastic to make it cold and brittle, then scrape it off.
scrape it off using one of those power scrapers as mentioned earlier.. I've seen them at most rental houses..
Is the adhesive black? If so it may be cut back, and most likely contains asbestos.
$10.00 an SF. Maybe for removal, cheap engineered floor or pad and carpet. The home owner needs to check their policy to see if it was to replace with matching materials or just replace.
Chuck S
Do you think an insurance adjuster would accept $10.00 a SF to remove the mastic?
<Do you think an insurance adjuster would accept $10.00 a SF to remove the mastic?>I would not know. Depends on the locale. Did you test the mastic for asbestos?Chuck Slive, work, build, ...better with wood
Solid wood over concrete can sometimes be trouble, depending on the climate. It is likely that someone makes engineered flooring in parquet patterns.