Someone has superglued our entire carpet to the concrete floor.

[Driftingonawave]

Shamelessly posting for traffic but I'm very stressed and concerned.

We've saved up for ages to replace the carpet in out home. It's the original carpet that was laid when the house was built 8 years ago. We've lived here 5.

It's not our home, it's owned by a private landlord that used to be part of the council.

Basically, I've been and ordered the laminate and came back home. Thought I'll just lift a bit of the carpet to see what's under, more curiosity than anything. I've now discovered the entire carpet is glued to the concrete floor.

There are no carpet tracks, no underlay just the carpet and the glue. I've emailed the landlord to request they remove it but I'm not going to hold my breath.

Has anyone removed this before? It took me 45 mins to remove about 20cm x 10cm. The carpet downstairs is 33m squared

Please tell me there's a magic tool to fix this!

Mumsnet is so hilariously middle class at times

The company i work for used to do flooring and I'm pretty sure they used solvents to remove it. Glue is often used for vinyl and stuff so there must be a way of removing it, your fitter will know

When we had to remove tiles which were stuck down, the shop we bought our new flooring from lent us a powered scraper to get through the glue. Basically like a heavy duty scraper which vibrated like a pneumatic drill. It was still hard work, but MUCH easier than anything else.

I'd caution against using your iron - if the carpet has nylon in it, it will make an almighty mess.

Honestly the attitude to renters here makes my blood boil. We’ll likely never be able to buy despite DH having a good job. We have disabled dc and prices just keep going up. OP I have no advice but we too replaced carpet here. Ours was like an old pub carpet. Didn’t mind paying for it as it was still in good nick, just ugly, so the landlord had no reason to replace, it was down to it not being my taste. I had to look at it every day. Likewise I’ve spent a lot on the garden. Just because it’s not our property doesn’t mean it’s not our home. I hope you find a solution x

You’ve had some strange replies to your OP!

I think you may need some sort of carpet puller-upper tool, like this maybe?

www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00A390QGG/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_9VDZF1C3DKX0ZJPC9RG1

This is standard practice in France. Everyone glues their carpet down, they sell the adhesive next to the carpet in Furniture stores.
We wanted to replace the ( very tatty ) carpet with laminate, like you we found it was impossible to shift, although you could buy some very expensive and very smelly solvent. We just got the fitter to lay the laminate over the carpet. It is necessary to roll it out from the middle so it lies well and doesn’t wrinkle.

it worked really well, it was like having nice soft underlay ( although the original carpet was pretty thin and low pile). We don’t live there now but when we went to see our purchasers nine years later it was still down and looking good.

Yeah you need what @ReviewingTheSituation describes. Oddly enough it’s called a stripper machine. You’ll also need the floor underneath properly prepared before you lay laminate. Maybe screeching & decent laminate underlay so it doesn’t ‘bounce’. Whoever is doing the job for you should’ve quoted for all of this in the price. If your not having this done, it won’t be an investment, it’ll last a year or so tops.

Screeding. Not screeching!

I'd leave it down and use it as underlay. Just put the wooden floor on top. We did this in my daughters bedroom and it worked well.

Because people are a bit dim and think all rentals are the same. Where the landlords are cocks who make you live with rotten flooring and magnolia walls where you can't put any pictures up.

Personally I'd be recruiting some people to see how strong they are. Case of beer for the winner.

Oh for Christ sake, was the OP's question 'Should I pay to replace my landlord's carpet?'
No. It bloody wasn't.
So please answer the actual question.

If it was superglue, the solvent would be acetone (nail-polish remover).

What it's more likely to be is a carpet adhesive (and I've seen this before, it's a pig to remove). Again, try acetone, turpentine, or paint thinner. Test on a small area and use a paint scraper.
Pretty much whatever happens, it isn't exactly going to be fun.

Don't do this. Any spills on the floor will seep through to the old carpet, and er, muck up the parquet (unless the parquet is first sealed to within an inch of its life).

www.concretecamouflage.com/how_to_remove_carpet_glue.cfm

Tons of products and methods if you google OP

It’s not that weird, I’ve seen it in lots of houses. You can get carpet glue remover from HG, you need a heavy duty floor scraper too.

I would have thought a solvent was needed and would pay a flooring person to do it, because you said it was a large area.

Had this at my mum’s and it took two days to get it up. The glue was worst at the edges and nothing worked, we tries steam, iron, every chemical under the sun. What worked was cutting the carpet into 30 cm width strips and then grabbing the edge with pliers and pulling like removing wallpaper. Sometimes you got a decent length strip and sometimes a tiny bit. If you do it with bare hands you get bad blisters/carpet burn. You then need a chisel or wall scraper to get the last bits up.
Good luck it was a miserable job.

I would say it’s contact adhesive…it’s used lots to stick carpets down.

I did Google but, and this might be me being dense, the glue removers look like they remove the glue once the carpet is gone? I'm not sure how I'd get the solvent onto the glue except by pouring it on the carpet?

I've had a Google and it seems you can hire some sort of power tool which peels the carpet up. OP - try your local tools rentals place and see what they say

I can't leave it down either, new flooring is 8mm thick and the front door wouldn't open if the laminate went on top.

Definitely do not put laminate on top of the existing carpet. The person saying they rolled it on top was possibly referring to vinyl flooring which is different. The laminate is designed to go onto a solid base.
Hope you manage to get it removed successfully op.

Try a hairdryer at the glue, if nobody else has already suggested

hire a large steamer from DIY store it won't cost as much as getting a carpet fitter