So you have a concrete floor that was once carpeted and now you want polished concrete. However, you may feel that there is so much carpet glue everywhere that there is no hope for the floor and that it is going to require so much work that the cost will be overwhelming. Then again, you may think that the solution is to replace the concrete floor.

This is something that has happened to concrete floors all over Minneapolis and St. Paul. Mostly in office buildings and large structures that had carpeting for one reason or another, the glue may or may not be tacky. You can do a walkthrough and evaluate the concrete floor that you want polished. If any glue is able to be manually scraped up, you can do so. You also want to make sure there are no bolts or nails on the floor that can damage the concrete floor polishing equipment. The polished concrete professionals will also do a walkthrough to ensure there is no debris that can damage their equipment. However, it is good to have multiple sets of eyes looking. You may even want to see if you can scrape up any of the glue. If you can’t, that’s okay.

If the glue is still tacky, some old grinding dust can be spread out on the floor. This will ensure the moisture is drawn out of the glue and make grinding it dry much easier. A 30 grit grinding dust is recommended for this. However, it is important to grind as little as possible, but still be able to make the necessary progress. All of the scratches that are put into the floor will need to be buffed out during the polishing process, which is why the grinding needs to be minimal.

From there, an aggressive diamond tool may be used to remove any coatings. If the grinding proves to be unsuccessful, then this may be the trick that does it. The professionals may not place any weight on their machine to see if the machine itself can do it. The reason why a great deal of care needs to be used in this case is because scratches that are put in the floor by these machines can be very difficult to get out and that means it will take more time to get the polished concrete done.

If the glue is dry and brittle, grinding wet can help out a great deal. The grinding machine simply moves back and forth on the areas with glue and on the clean concrete to keep the diamond tooling from becoming gummed up with glue.

While removing glue from concrete floors can be trial and error, ensuring that a professional Twin Cities concrete polishing company does the job for you will ensure that it is done right. In that case, you have a great deal of experience working for you so you don’t have to worry about excessive damage occurring to the floor, which would need to be repaired, before the concrete polishing process begins.