Cleaning the floor from paint, its features, the preparatory stage of work, technologies of mechanical, chemical and thermal methods for removing paint material from the floor covering. Removing paint from the floor is quite time consuming, but absolutely necessary when replacing the topcoat. Especially big problems are caused by material from many years ago. Over time, the pigment penetrates deeply into the pores of the base and forms a sufficiently strong surface. You will learn how to remove paint from the floor using existing technologies from our article.
Features of cleaning the floor from paint
A huge number of different types of paints are used for decorative finishing of floors. The painted coating not only has an attractive appearance, but also reliable protection from moisture and sunlight in the form of a thin impervious film of paint and varnish material. From time to time, the paint on the floor has to be renewed due to wear, loss of gloss or some other reason. This can be done in two ways. One of them involves applying a new layer of material over the old paint. This method is the least time consuming, but rather risky: chemical incompatibility of coatings can at any time lead to their peeling, peeling and even blistering. And homeowners may not have data on the composition of paint applied on a floor a dozen years ago or more.
Another way is to remove paint from the floor to the very foundation. In this case, using one or another tool, it is necessary to take into account the type of coverage:
- Wooden floor … Its material is quite malleable, so it will not be difficult to remove paint from floorboards, plywood or parquet. However, care should be taken when using a sander or electric planer: if the heads of the metal flooring fasteners are not sunk enough into the wood, such a tool can easily break against them.
- Self-leveling floor … This coating has a monolithic structure, so it is quite difficult to damage it when cleaning from paint. To work with it, you can use any available means.
- Linoleum and tile floors … Removing paint from them with ordinary tools may leave scratches. Therefore, before using them, the top layer of the coating must be softened with hot air from an industrial hair dryer.
In addition, when choosing a method for removing old paint from the floor, you need to take into account the number of layers applied and the strength of adhesion to the base surface. Before work, you should focus on the most difficult cleaning option, this will help arm yourself with patience and successfully complete this procedure.
Preparatory work before removing paint from the floor
An important part of the work ahead is the availability of the right tool. The composition of his kit depends on the method of cleaning the floor, but in general it can consist of a spatula, a scraper, chemical paint removers, an industrial hair dryer, an electric drill, special attachments for it, a grinder and hand abrasive materials.
In the process of cleaning the floor, a significant amount of dust can rise into the air in the form of crushed paint particles, which then settles on the floor and forms dirt, mixing with fragments of concrete, wood and cleaning solutions. Taking this into account, it is advisable not to move the furniture to free one or another section of the floor for repair, but to take it all out of the room. The same applies to household equipment and other furnishings. To avoid having to "repair" your health after repairing the floor, you should acquire the necessary protective equipment for your skin, eyes and respiratory organs. Some of them can be found at home, while others can be bought in the store - these are dust goggles, heavy clothing, a respirator and gloves. You should put on an old hat on your head or, if you don't have one, make it at least from a newspaper, as in the good old days.
Unfortunately, there are no absolutely harmless, low-labor, and instant-effective methods of removing paint from the floor. There are only three main options for cleaning any painted surface: mechanical, thermal and chemical. Each of them has its own positive and negative sides. So, let's proceed to a detailed examination of these methods.
Mechanical method of cleaning the floor from paint
It is with him that many people prefer to start removing paint from the floor. In this case, manual, electric tools can be used, as well as their alternate combination. The use of each of these types of devices is associated with certain advantages and disadvantages. Let's consider them in detail.
Using a hand tool to remove paint
These "gadgets" include scrapers, spatulas, chisels, hammers, axes, floats and abrasive material in the form of a special mesh, rasp or sandpaper. All of them are suitable for processing small areas of the floor or its hard-to-reach places, for example, under heating radiators or at the abutments of the floor to walls and outlets of communications.
Working with hand tools is rather laborious. Therefore, to facilitate it, the paint on the floor is preliminarily softened in various ways, which will be discussed below.
Hard material can be immediately removed from the floor using a sharpened ax, chisel and hammer, and the residue from this activity can be removed with an abrasive mesh or emery cloth. For the action to be effective, it is important to correctly select the angle of the plane of the tool with the working edge in relation to the floor surface.
The main advantage of using hand tools is the minimum amount of dust generated during operation. This method of removing paint from a wooden or concrete floor, apart from physical effort, does not involve any more costs, therefore it is considered the cheapest.
Using electrical paint stripping equipment
Electric tools that can be used to clean the floor include a planer, angle grinder, angle grinder, drill with attachments, and special routers.
Unlike working with hand tools, the use of electrical equipment does not require any unnecessary body movements. Here, the technology for cleaning the floor is simple: it is enough to press the working part of the switched-on mechanism against the painted coating and gradually move with it as the paint is removed. Naturally, such work is more productive.
To clean the floor with a grinder, you need to purchase special attachments for it and be able to use them. One of them is a special brush, which consists of cutting rigid metal wires. It should be small in diameter and comply with the technical parameters of the tool. Otherwise, when gaining a rotation speed of 10,000 rpm. "Grinder" will be difficult to hold in your hands, and its gearbox can quickly fail.
Another nozzle is a special circle consisting of abrasive pelts radially attached to a metal disc. The grit should be over 40. If you select a smaller grit, the grinding wheel will wear off quickly and clean the floor slowly. Mostly it is installed on the grinder before removing the paint from the concrete floor. Working with this tool is accompanied by the formation of a large amount of dust, each minute of the cleaning process takes about half an hour for the particles of abrasive and paint suspended in the air to settle. A quick removal of dust from the work site is possible with an industrial vacuum cleaner that can be connected to some types of grinders. However, such equipment "bites" in price, it is usually at the disposal of specialized construction departments: sites, teams, teams, etc.
If there is no grinder in the house, you can use an ordinary electric drill to clean the floor. There are also special attachments for her. One of them is a special hemispherical brush with a metal wire bristle inside. There is also a lot of dust from using such a brush, but its work is quite effective. In addition, other attachments in the form of chains and metal crowns can be used in conjunction with the drill.
Prepare an electric plane before removing paint from a wooden floor. Handle this tool with care. Before using it, the floor boards must be inspected and sunk into the wood of the nail heads for the reasons described earlier. The paint can be removed from the glued or grooved flooring with a plane without fear.
Thermal method of cleaning the floor from old paint
It consists in heating the painted coating in order to soften the paint and then mechanically remove it from the surface. Burners on various fuels, industrial hair dryers and even ordinary household irons can be used as heating devices.
The technology of thermal cleaning of the floor from paint is simple: you need to take the heating device in your left hand, direct a stream of hot air or flame to the surface and, as the paint melts in the direction of travel, with your right hand armed with a spatula, clean the soft paint material from the floor. Despite its simplicity, the thermal cleaning method has its drawbacks and limitations in its use. An open flame stream, for example, can be fire hazardous to a wooden floor. In addition, there is a factor limiting the use of this method in closed rooms: when heated, many paints release toxic substances into the space. Therefore, using thermal cleaning, the room should be constantly ventilated.
Another disadvantage of this method is the limitation of its use in relation to polymer and concrete floors. For example, a self-leveling floor consisting of epoxy resin can begin to melt with the paint already at a temperature of 200 degrees. Due to its massiveness, the concrete floor cannot be heated well to remove paint from it by a thermal method.
Another trouble lies in wait when the paint overheats with a heating device. If it is not immediately removed from the floor, it will bake, and after that it will be very difficult to remove such a composition. Now about all the good things. The use of an industrial hair dryer in the thermal method of cleaning is perfect for those who are actively thinking about how to remove paint from a wooden floor. Flameless preparation of painted wood with a stream of hot air will cause profuse blistering of paint bubbles of any age and layer thickness. After that, it can be easily cleaned with a spatula to obtain a surface suitable for applying any paint and varnish material without drying and other additional preparation. This greatly speeds up the process of repairing the floor. And finally, the last method that can be used in the absence of an industrial hair dryer and burner. It consists in heating a layer of paint with an ordinary iron through a layer of foil. This will, of course, be much longer and less quality than the use of the above devices, but this method also has a right to life. After softening the paint with an iron, remove it from the floor with a scraper or trowel.
Important! Some paints, when heated, are able to bond even more tightly to their base. Therefore, in order not to be trapped, it is recommended to first test the thermal cleaning process on a small area of the coating.
Removing paint from floors with chemicals
This method is suitable for a relatively new coating, which is no more than 2-3 years old, "chemistry" may not cope with cleaning old floors. In this case, the removal of paint from the floor is carried out using organic and alkaline special washes.
The essence of the method: according to the instructions attached to the purchased drug, you need to prepare a solution that softens the paint, and then apply it to the painted surface using a paint roller or brush. After a certain time, the paint will swell from the action of the agent, after which it can be removed mechanically using a spatula, scraper or brush with a metal bristle. If unsuccessful, the above procedure should be repeated until the result is obtained.
The chemical method of cleaning the floor from paint has significant drawbacks. First of all, it is insecure. The overwhelming majority of reagents have a specific odor and a certain percentage of toxicity, so there is no need to talk about their healing effect on the body. Some of the washes can cause burns if spilled onto exposed areas of the body.
Secondly, after cleaning the floor with a chemical method, waste disposal must be carried out in a special way, it is strictly forbidden to dump them into the sewer. Last but not least, this method is not cheap. You will need a lot of cleaners for the floor, and its cost is quite high.
But as a consolation, there are several inexpensive chemical methods to remove paint from concrete or wood floors. All of them are sufficiently "sparing" for the base and safe for health:
- A mixture of lime and soda ash. To prepare a wash, you need 1, 2 kg of quicklime and 0.4 kg of soda, dilute in water to a thick state. After that, the resulting mixture should be applied to the painted surface and left in this state for 12 hours. After softening, the paint can be easily scraped off with a scraper.
- Soda ash and water. The wooden floor should be moistened abundantly and covered with a layer of baking soda. After that, it must be covered with plastic wrap and left for a day. After the wood has been impregnated with water, the paint layer will rise and it can be removed with a spatula.
- Relatively fresh paint can be softened with warm water or mineral kerosene and then removed with a scraper.
Watch a video on removing old paint from the floor:
When choosing the optimal method of removing paint from the floor in relation to certain conditions, one should take into account the versatility of the mechanical method, as well as the speed and negative aspects of the chemical and thermal. But in general, the decision is yours. Good luck!
