Cleaning the Porch

At some point in history, someone thought it would be a good idea to use construction adhesive to glue exterior grade carpet to the concrete floor of the front porch.

I can't imagine that this ever looked better than the concrete would have on its own. The blue, gray, and black carpet definitely looked out of place after I had the house resided.
When I ripped up the carpeting, it was disheartening to see that the construction adhesive was over 1/8th of an inch thick in some places. Not only that, but a fair amount of carpet material was embedded in it.

 After doing some research on how best to clean this up, I settled on Smart Strip. Smart Strip is an environmentally friendly, 100% biodegradable stripper / paint remover. It is non-toxic, odor-free, and is a very smart choice for this kind of work.

 The other things that were required for this job are a 4" deck brush, masking tape, plastic painter's drop cloth, a steel scraper, a good 6" wide scrubbing brush, a broom, a garbage bag, a flat-front shovel, and a hooked up garden hose.

The first step was to tape off all of the vinyl siding, and painted brick that I didn't want to strip or discolor.

 Next I swept the porch thoroughly.

Then I took the 4" deck brush, and spread the Smart Strip over the areas of the porch where there was construction adhesive. This stuff goes on like a gel, with a consistency similar to sour cream. I spread it on pretty thick, about 1/4" in the spots where the construction adhesive was thickest.

After that I took a big sheet of the plastic painter's drop cloth, and laid it over the whole porch. This part was a real hassle, especially with the slightest wind. You have to try not to walk on any sections of plastic that has Smart Strip under it. Once the plastic was down, I took the broom and gently went over the whole thing. That was to make the plastic stick to the Smart Strip; so that it was sealed down, and wouldn't blow away.

 After that, I waited. Because the temperature was under the recommended temperature on the Smart Strip bucket, I waited 48 hours instead of the recommended 24.

To clean up; I started by pulling up the plastic, and sticking it in the trash bag. Then I sprayed the whole thing down really well with the garden hose.

After that, I took the steel scraper to it. I scraped the whole thing, as well as I could. This part makes a real mess. With lots of the construction adhesive coming off in various sized super sticky wads.

 While scraping, you occasionally have to back off, spray it down, and clean up all the loose construction adhesive. I found it easiest to spray it into a pile with the hose, then use the flat front shovel to scoop it up. From there I dumped it into the trash bag.

Once the whole thing was scraped, and hosed off really good; it was time to use the scrubbing brush.

For all of those spots where there's just a little adhesive left, the scrubber works great for getting the final bits off.

For all of those spots where there was still a considerable amount of adhesive left; it's best to let everything dry completely (overnight), and then repeat the whole process. I found that I used less Smart Strip each time I did this, since there was less area covered in construction adhesive.

I had to apply the Smart Strip in this manner 5 times to get all of the adhesive off. The only really laborious steps of the process were the scraping and scrubbing. Other than that, it was real easy.

 One thing to note, this stuff does seem to work much better when the temperature is in the recommended range. I think that if I had waited for it to warm up a bit, I could have gotten away with fewer applications.

I'm really happy with the results, and I'm glad I found a safe way to deal with what could have been a nasty problem.