How To Remove Asphalt or Vinyl Floor Tiles Using Dry Ice

Because dry ice is extremely cold (-109.3 or -78.5), you can use it to freeze your home’s old floor tiles so as to make them loose and easy to remove. The primary idea here is to cause the tiles to slightly shrink. You weaken the glue that bonds the tiles and the floor by subjecting it to the ice’s extremely cold temperature.  Using dry ice to remove old floor tiles is cheap, easy, non-toxic, convenient, and when the necessary handling precautions are followed, safe. To remove your asphalt or vinyl floor tiles using dry ice, follow this easy procedure:

1. Safety first

As your crushed ice delivery service provider may have explained, prolonged contact with dry ice will freeze cells and injure/burn your skin. Also, dry ice is fundamentally frozen carbon dioxide gas which, when left to sublimate, can poison the air.

You don’t want any of that to happen to you. To be safe, wear protective clothing such as a pair of goggles, leather gloves, and a gas mask beforehand. Once that’s done, open the doors and windows to ensure free and continuous circulation of fresh air, then turn a portable exhaust fan on to facilitate quick exhaustion of the sublimating carbon dioxide gas. 

2.Place Dry Ice on the Floor Tiles
 
Get a sheet of waxed paper that is about an inch longer and wider than a single tile and place it on one of the tiles that you intend to remove. The paper should slightly overhang to the neighboring tiles.

Arrange dry ice on top of the waxed paper using a pair of tongs and then cover it with a towel to reduce the ice’s rate of sublimation (reduced wastage, money saved!). Sit back and wait for the particular tile to become completely frosted. 

3.Pull the waxed paper to reposition the dry ice 

Pulling on the edge of the waxed paper, reposition your dry ice to a second tile. As that second tile frosts, start removing the loosened first tile. 

4.Strip the first tile 

Because the tile is already loose, you will be able to pull it out effortlessly using a scrapper, a flathead screwdriver, or a putty knife. If by any chance the tile isn’t loose enough, you can always facilitate the loosening process by tapping the tile slightly with a hammer.  

5.Store the removed tile  

Using a pair of tongs, carry the removed tile from the floor to the designated storage area. This storage area should be well-ventilated to allow any dry ice that could have attached to the tile to sublimate and freely escape to the exterior.

Now move on to the second tile and repeat the above procedure. If the dry ice on the waxed paper sublimates to exhaustion, add some more.   

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