I have been scraping my concrete in preparation for a glue down install. There is still alot of residue that is almost impossible to remove with a 4" razor, but I can scratch it away with my fingernail or the corner of the razor or a wire brush (good concrete, not the soft stuff). FloorGuy's example looked extremely clean, unless that is an illusion of the picture. When you get to the point where you are just scraping concrete dust with the razor even though you can still see plaster residue in the pores and crevices, is that sufficient? Can anyone provide more insight into how to know when you have scraped the concrete clean "enough". I'll be using PlaniPatch for the leveler.

Your not going to get it out of the pores in the concrete. That is why, once I get it down to a residue, I encapsulate it with either ARDEX SD-F or Mapei Ultra skim coat. I use PaniPatch to fill and then encapsulate the whole thing, because you'll see when you screed, it isn't always perfect, and the skimcoat helps that also.

Floorguy

Could you describe what "skimcoat" means?

Thanks!