Can I lay laminate flooring over glue left from vinyl flooring I pulled up. Thanks, Nancy?

Question

I did not want to remove glue as I don't know if it contains asbestos.

Answer 1

To put it simply, yes, just make sure you lay the foam underlayment down first and be sure to tape all  of the seams togeather, just about any kind of tape will do besides scotch tape.... Hope that helps..

Answer 2

If you are talking about click laminate flooring than the answer is, absolutely.  The only thing I may suggest is that you smooth out any large clumps of glue by scraping.  Also You may want to use some floor leveler to smooth out the floor before putting the laminate over. Make sure your flooring either has the padding already on it or that tou purchase the padding.  I have installed many laminate floors, some over cracked VCT tiles, using floor leveler where chunks were missing from tiles.

Answer 3

I have successfully put laminate flooring over a lot of old flooring but not glue.

If the glue is indeed very hard and just as importantly level, then you should be successful.

My concern would be with it not being level or with the glue becoming sticky again.  

The majority of laminate floors need to "float" to allow them to expand and contract accross the entire floor.  If one part of the floor is sticking to the old glue, then you will probably end up with the laminate expanding and contracting against the glued area.  This will either result in a high area when it contracts against the stuck spot, or a gap in the laminate when it expands away from the stuck spot.

Now having said all of that, if the underfloor pad you are using is good enough, it will hopefully both fill some minor unevenness, as well as be the part that sticks to the glue.  

If it's high quality laminate and you don't want to take any risks, you should buy luan and nail that down over the glue, and put your underpad and flooring over that.

If it's not very expensive and not not a difficult area to lay the laminate down on, then I would just go ahead and try it with the hope the underpad will take care of everything.

Finally if it's the type that has the underpad also fastened to the flooring, then you could either buy a separate piece of underpadding or put down the aforementioned luan.  I believe the underpadding will run you about $25 or so for a 10x12 area.  3 pieces of 4x8 luan to cover the same area will run close to $50 in my area.

If you do decide to put down the luan, be sure to nail or staple it very good so that it doesn't shift or bubble, don't just nail the edges.  If I recall correctly I think they call for a staple every 1 foot by 1 foot area.  The staples I'm referring to are 1 inch long from a pneumatic gun, not the short ones from an electric or manual stapler.  You could also use sheet rock screws to put the luan down, but whatever you use make sure you know what is 1" under your existing floor.  If you have radiant floor heating, you don't want to go putting holes in that!

Good luck.