Here's my dilemma, I work for a disaster restoration company and we are currently working on a house that flooded about 3.5 weeks ago. It's a tongue and grooved hardwood floor glued EXTREMELY well on concrete (the glue is a green color if that makes any difference). We have been using pry bars and hammers and managed to get about 150 sq. ft. of this flooring up in the 3.5 weeks that we've been working on it. We normally don't do this kind of extensive work, the company I work for would normally sub it out, but 3 companies have looked at it and turned the job down ( I wonder why ). We still have about 1000 sq. ft. of flooring to go, and my body is about to give out. The entire floor has just been splintering and cracking the whole way, is there any sort of chemical, tool, piece of equipment that they could get that would make this a bit less painstaking. The floor is about 1/2 inch thick, and 2.5 inches wide. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

It sounds as if you are removing ( or attempting to remove ) an engineered floor glued to concrete with a quality urethane adhesive. Our host here, Ken, has a great article on just this topic. Here it is:
http://www.hardwoodinstaller.com/hardwo ... e-glue.htm

Yes, and I remember that job Gary! Even the labor pool guys don't want to come back a second day. But the way I look at it, it's better than being stuck in the hot sun and 95º heat. There are floor removal machines that some say work. I haven't tried it because I've always had doubts it would work. Finding such equipment is also difficult unless you live in a good sized market.

Cut the floor into 4" to 6" strips across the grain. Get a portable "jack hammer" Demo hammer and get after it.

The green glue, sounds like Manningtons urethane.

I hope you charged enough to Demo this floor.

Have fun.

Yeah we tried using an air chisel from Lowe's and that actually broke the 3rd day we had it, the floor put too much stress on it. So we went right back to hammering and prying it. Yeah the company I work for already billed it and we kind of laughed like oh crap were here for the long haul. But the owner of the company was looking at the lack of progress and how much more there was to do and he came out to the job and looked at it and was like stop right where your at and I'm getting somebody else to do this. But nobody seems to be biting at the job. Homeowners are on vacation for the next 2 weeks so I don't have to think about it for awhile thankfully. Sounds like the answer is "good luck" then right. Lol.....awwww crap.

If you cut the wood across the boards, then you buzz down the row busting up blocks with the demo hammer. The last one I did, working solo, by myself, I got up 260sq. ft., razor scraped all the glue and then reprepped the substrate(concrete) flatness. Took me 5 hours.

Lets see?? I may have pictures of a gluedown tear out somewhere on this puter let me see if I can find them and post them.

Do I see an Estwing hammer in that picture? Yes, I do! Perry, you are another flooring contractor who knows how to choose the RIGHT flooring hammer. It's the only one that is INDESTRUCTABLE.

I wouldn't say that! I have snapped my favorite Eswing they dont make anymore.

How in the world did you do that? I thought they came with a lifetime warranty. I have used them for over 25 yrs. and I'm only on my second one because the first one got stolen!

It was a 32-oz. framing hammer. It didn't have claws on the back, it had a flat pick, with a hole and tapered slot for nail pulling. I was pulling a big huge nail from a railroad tie, It wouldn't budge prying the normal way you pull a nail, so I had it wrapped around the back and prying down sideways racheting the nail out, and with a lot of pressure, SNAP!!!

That is my second Eswing, I have had for over 10 years.

THere is the answer............ Hire FloorGuy to tear up that floor...