It seems to be the silly season for home remodelling and people tearing up old floors to replace them with new ones. There's a few things you should know about to prevent frustration and major legal/health/insurance headaches before you get going:Older floors, both vinyl (sometimes referred to as linoleum, which is both a generic term and an actual flooring type different from vinyl [it's like the Coke=soda even if it isn't Coke® brand in the southern US thing]), and vinyl composite tile/asphalt tile were sometimes made with asbestos either in them or in the glues used to adhere them to the floor. Because of this, it is not uncommon for older floors to have multiple layers as it was easier to simply lay a new floor over the one with asbestos in it than to to through the asbestos removal/abatement process.http://ift.tt/2mc7HnV: The above is for the US specifically. Other countries have different regulations regarding asbestos use and safety. It is important you check them out before tearing into your floor, just in case. If in doubt, ask a flooring contractor about what to look for. Then ask another...it's sometimes not a topic all contractors will be familiar with, older ones who've been in the business a while will not have had the luxury (in most cases) of having dodged abatement their entire career. They'll know more about the pitfalls than someone not as experienced.Also, flooring removal is a big part of the job. As a pro, time lost removing flooring is a pain since the business reputation is on how the final product looks and just as importantly functions to the consumer. Bad floor prep leads to premature floor failure, and that leads to a bad reputation as a contractor.One of the things we use to preserve our sanity, speed up the process of floor prep, and provide the greatest amount of productivity we can (keeping labor costs to a minimum and prices for them from going through the roof), is one of these guys (which can be used on both concrete and wood floors, though the later takes more finesse and skill than the former):http://ift.tt/2CVobet will notice that the above seems pretty simplistic, especially considering faster work could be made of flooring removal with powered grinding tools. It's been my personal experience that you don't always know what you are getting into when doing flooring removal. Even if it isn't toxic to remove, many flooring ingredients aren't something that you want to turn into dust and kick up into the air to be either breathed in during the process of removal or deposited when the dust settles later somewhwere else (fiberglass, silica, etc.) for homeowners/business owners/follow on construction cleanup crews to have to deal with. The less mess (ie dust and debris) we create during the removal stage, the faster (and ultimately cleaner) the following stages will be. It's a pro courtesy type thing, but it means my advice should be taken with that in mind. A demo contractor or a DIYer/homeowner might not care about making a mess, either for themselves or those who follow after them, so their advice needs to be considered with that in mind.If in doubt, force yourself to ask as many questions as you can from as many people as you can. Give weight to those with the most experience but don't disregard those without it. Everything, technically speaking, can undergo periods of advancements that leave those wholly reliant on their past experience struggling to keep pace with it.And a huge thanks to those who demo their own flooring in prep for us to come in later to install the new. It can be a hassle if you don't prep correctly (I've personally had people tell me they would do it, so I scheduled a shorter window to install flooring for them because I didn't need to account for floor prep) only to get half way through and give up and cause me to get bound up with scheduling for quite a while after that in the future. But ultimately, when it works out and is done right, it frees me from the regulqtory legal, health and safety, and insurance responsibilities that I would have to face as a business owner/operator (that a homeowner demoer wouldn't have to necessarily face) otherwise. And that helps me to keep my prices lower. Win-win for mostly everyone. via /r/DIY http://ift.tt/2mbRdMD
