"The quickest and cleanest way to remove vinyl is to use dry ice.
Buy a one cubic foot block and have it sliced into one inch pieces each 12"x 12". Lay these on the floor and wait for the tile to start popping off. Make sure you wear heavy gloves, as you can damage your hands without them. You can store dry ice in the refrigerator, using paper to separate the pieces. There is no mess, as the ice lasts a very long time, and just returns to the gas carbon dioxide as it melts."
Another reader, who refinishes floors for a living, cautions that anyone removing flooring materials should make sure that they are not dealing with asbestos, a common ingredient of many older flooring glues.
Jim Newcomer, who owns Columbia Trading Company in Portland, Oregon, says that if you are having your floors refinished anyway, there is no need to worry about glue residue. "The first pass of a commercial floor sander normally removes all the glue," says Jim. "In general it is more important to the owner of the old house to test the glue (for asbestos) at a local environmental laboratory than it is to find out what will melt it."
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