carpet pad glued to asbestos tile

hpygl

Hello, We bought an old cabin and we discovered that the carpet is not cleanable (too old and moldy to keep). In one room we pulled up the carpet, but the pad wouldn't come up. It is glued (apparently) to the flooring and terribly moldy, due to pets. So we really need to get this up, then we discovered that this pad was glued to asbestos tiles. We know that they are pretty stable if not disturbed. We are not in a position to remove the tiles, they are firmly in place, etc. We just want to remove the carpet pad and put down new carpeting. We could use a heat gun, a adhesive remove, rent a machine, or just scrape, scrape, scrape.

Here is my concern, if I use a heat gun, will that make the tile unstable? If I use a chemical, will that make the tile unstable? You get the picture. I don't care how i do it, I just want to do it safely.

Thank you!

Bud Cline

You are making a mountain out of a mole hill.

Go buy a 18" wallpaper scraper with a 3 or 4 inch razorblade type blade and scrape-away the old backer and the adhesive that holds it there. That's all there is to it.

hpygl

Thanks for the advice. I had no idea, just didn't want to scrape against the tiles and release the asbestos by scraping along them and possible gouging them.