Help Removing Leftover Carpet Adhesive & Foam

[Wade R]

I'm currently doing a total renovation to my 17' Casita. I gutted the interior and ripped out all the old carpeting. Unfortunately there's a ton of adhesive and foam left. I've tried using chemicals (Goo gone, goof off, and mineral spirits. Goof off worked the best, but still not very well. It's also extremely unpleasant stuff and I was having to use a ton of it.) as well as a wire wheel with an angle grinder to remove it. The chemicals seemed ineffective and the wire wheel seemed far to slow going to be viable. How do you think I should remove it? I'm going to be buying sandblasting equipment to strip the trailer once I separate it from the shell. I've priced it out and buying the equipment from harbor freight and doing it myself is far cheaper than any of the quotes I've received to have it done professionally. Do you think sandblasting the adhesive and foam would work? Sandblasting fiberglass boat hulls is a thing that's done so at least some fiberglass can be media blasted safely. What do you think?

[stevebaz]

you will probably find sandblasting foam and rubber adhesive to be a poor choice as the surface is too soft to just blast off it will do a number on the fiber glass that it does hit and bounce offf the foam and cement. try a harbor freight oscillating multitool. with the round grit edge.

https://www.harborfreight.com/variab...ool-63113.html

[Civilguy]

Originally Posted by Wade R

I'm currently doing a total renovation to my 17' Casita. I gutted the interior and ripped out all the old carpeting. Unfortunately there's a ton of adhesive and foam left.

What sort of new interior finish are you going to install?

[EricAllyn]

I never tried sandblasting as I think it would damage the inside. I used a pressure washer when I did mine, (I have a thread on rebuilding a Casita 88) and that worked pretty well, since I planned on completely replacing the floor with new wood, glassed in. One thing I didn't do was realize that I needed to push the roof all the way back up to get everything to sit right after I was finished, and also to support all the way floor to roof. I also should have sanded the FG better where I wanted to have a good bond with new FG. If you plan on taking it off the frame and sandblasting that, check to see if there are small cracks, and it probably wouldn't hurt to weld a few extra supports where the stress points are.

If I can figure out how to put in a link, I'll post a link to the thread.

[EricAllyn]

https://www.fiberglassrv.com/forums/...6-a-81327.html


I think this is the link.

[Wade R]

Originally Posted by EricAllyn

I never tried sandblasting as I think it would damage the inside. I used a pressure washer when I did mine, (I have a thread on rebuilding a Casita 88) and that worked pretty well, since I planned on completely replacing the floor with new wood, glassed in. One thing I didn't do was realize that I needed to push the roof all the way back up to get everything to sit right after I was finished, and also to support all the way floor to roof. I also should have sanded the FG better where I wanted to have a good bond with new FG. If you plan on taking it off the frame and sandblasting that, check to see if there are small cracks, and it probably wouldn't hurt to weld a few extra supports where the stress points are.

If I can figure out how to put in a link, I'll post a link to the thread.

Thank you so much! I'll rent a pressure washer and let you know how it goes. May just have the frame professionally sandblasted and powdercoate if the pressure washer works on the shell.

[Wade R]

Originally Posted by Civilguy

What sort of new interior finish are you going to install?

I'm going to build a totally custom interior that's mounted internally to avoid using rivets. As for replacing the carpet I'm thinking of using some kinda insulating headliner.

[Wade R]

Originally Posted by EricAllyn

I never tried sandblasting as I think it would damage the inside. I used a pressure washer when I did mine, (I have a thread on rebuilding a Casita 88) and that worked pretty well, since I planned on completely replacing the floor with new wood, glassed in. One thing I didn't do was realize that I needed to push the roof all the way back up to get everything to sit right after I was finished, and also to support all the way floor to roof. I also should have sanded the FG better where I wanted to have a good bond with new FG. If you plan on taking it off the frame and sandblasting that, check to see if there are small cracks, and it probably wouldn't hurt to weld a few extra supports where the stress points are.

If I can figure out how to put in a link, I'll post a link to the thread.

I rented a 4000psi pressure washer for a week and was able to strip > 95% of all the glue and foam away. Still very slow and tedious, but it worked very well. No issues other than cost and the ridiculous amount of noise pollution. Thank you for the suggestion!

[Casita Greg]

I removed the glued-on carpeting in my Casita overhead cabinets. A bit different as far as locations, but it's the same adhesive and carpeting as the walls have. Anyway, I used MEK solvent and a lot of those blue heavy duty paper towels, (shop wipes.)

I would recommend a good fan or two and a respirator, but it worked really good at removing the adhesive residue, along with an 1 1/2" putty knife for scraping before wiping with the blue towels wetted with MEK.

First pic is after removal of the carpeting and adhesive in the overhead cabinet floors. (Now my spices and stuff actually sits flat in the cabinets.) I installed cut sections of Dri-Dek panels on the bottoms of all my cabinets. Makes clean-up from spills and whatever much easier than the carpeting.

[EricAllyn]

Thanks -- remember if you want to glass in supports, cabinets, beds, etc. you will need to sand the FG for the epoxy to bond well. I didn't on the first redo, and found when I started taking stuff out for the second redo, stiff came out easy because it really wasn't bonded, and some places had broken away a little. A quick rough sandpaper on a power sander worked really well for me.