500MR: BEAN-e-doo Mastic and Adhesive Remover for Concrete 1 Gal

PROJECT: 58 year old black asbestos mastic under cracked, beat up, loose asbestos tile. WHAT I USED FOR THE MASTIC REMOVAL: - Blue Bear 500MR - Concrete degreaser from Rust-Oleum - Rubber disposable gloves - Cheap squeegee you can throw away - Cheap scrub brush you can throw away - Disposable shoe covers - Kitty litter - Metal dust pan - Lots of those strong blue shop paper towels. (Not the kitchen paper towels) SHORT STORY First Attempt: 2 hour soak time Result: .....Kinda worked, but not really. - Lots of water was still on the floor and my patience was wearing thin after I got the tile up, so I didn't spread the 500MR as well as I should have. - The added water from my tile removal diluted the 500MR so it wasn't close to it's full strength. Second Attempt: 12 hour soak time Result: Mastic Gone! - After cleaning up my first attempt, I reapplied the 500MR and very evenly coated the floor. - Let it sit overnight - Some scrubbing, kitty litter, and a couple rounds of degreaser gave us a mastic free floor! LONG STORY: Background: We just bought a house from 1960 and it has asbestos tile running throughout (tested). Not a big deal as we would just be covering it up with other flooring anyway. However the popcorn ceiling in the master and the compromised tile in the laundry room would not be a simple "cover it up and forget it" type of solution. We had the popcorn ceiling professionally removed and I went to work on the tile. After watching video after video about different ways to remove this black death tar adhesive, I finally decided to give the Blue Bear 500MR the starting position. It was a little spendy, but I liked the idea that it was biodegradable and their videos made it look so darn easy. Prep: After putting on my hazmat suit, gloves, goggles, respirator, and telling my wife I loved her, just in case I didn't make it out alive, I stepped into the plastic and duct tape sealed room, armed with a spray bottle, hand tools, and the 500MR. After two hours of spraying water, tile scraping, and muffled swearing into my respirator, the tile was removed and it was time for the 500MR to step up to the plate. Performance: At this point I was so frustrated with the tile that I didn't give the 500MR a setup that would lead to it's success. The floor was still soaking wet with all the water and I was about to burn the newly purchased home to the ground. I poured a little less than half the 500MR on the floor, spread it around (sort of), and got out of my astronaut costume so I could get into the makeshift decontamination shower. We went back to our apartment, had dinner, and I returned two hours later. The mastic remover did the best it could with my sloppy set up. All the water that I left on the floor diluted the 500MR so it lost some of its strength and my spreading job was lazy at best. After using kitty litter to clean up all the water and 500MR, I gave the 500MR the second chance it deserved. I reapplied the 500MR using mostly my hand in a rubber glove to very evenly spread it over every square inch of the cleaned up floor. I then left it over night and returned the next morning to a floor that was easily broken free of it's black mastic tomb with a scrub brush and some more kitty litter. A couple rounds of degreaser and the floor is sans mastic! Conclusion: What I thought was going to be the easy part, taking off the tile, ended up being the bane of my existence. And what I thought was going to be the hardest part of the job, removing the black mastic, was made extremely easy by the Blue Bear 500MR (as soon as I actually took the time to do it correctly). Things I learned that might help you: - Don't let the 500MR get diluted with water. It doesn't work as well. Just squeegee up the water before applying. It doesn't need to be dry (and shouldn't be dry if your dealing with asbestos), just free of standing water. - Kitty litter is awesome. Worked way better for me to make a little pile of litter and squeegee the 500MR/mastic soup toward the pile instead of spreading the litter around everywhere. Kitty litter gets pasty and not easy to push around when it starts soaking everything up. - Give it time. I was nervous that the 500MR would dry out if left too long on the floor. It didn't. This has a constancy something close to olive oil so I'm sure the longer it sits the more it soaks into the concrete. This will result in very easy mastic removal, but also more time spent with the degreaser and the concrete possibly being stained. So use your judgement to get a good balance of what's important to you. We are laying new flooring over the laundry room so we didn't care if the concrete was stained. - Wear shoe covers. The shoe covers will get soaked with oil/degreaser and will not protect your shoes from getting oily and tracking it everywhere, but they WILL prevent the tread of your shoes from getting CAKED with kitty litter paste which is not fun to remove. They are also cheap, easy to take off, throw away in your mastic trash bag, and swap with each stage of the process. - You will use so many paper towels. Get the good, thick, blue shop paper towels. Normal kitchen paper towels won't work. (Sorry Bounty) I hope this helps anyone with the mastic removal process. And please don't remove/mess with anything containing asbestos unless you are confident you can do it safely, responsibly, and dispose of it according to your local Department of Environmental Quality code. It's not worth the risk. That being said... This stuff is awesome.

This stuff worked like a charm! I had about 1200 sq ft area in one end of my shop that had been a temporary apartment while we built the house. After we had the house built, I remodeled the apartment area to keep just one room and the bathroom. The remainder went back to the shop. But, I had used the peel-and-stick carpet tiles and after removing them, there was a lot of adhesive remaining on the concrete. I want to paint the floor, so the adhesive had to go (besides, it was sticky and a pain to walk on). I tried the floor adhesive remover sold at Home Depot and Lowes both (two different brands). All they did was make a mess. I did some research, and apparently most carpet tile (and probably other floor tiles as well) use a pressure sensitive adhesive that is totally different from regular floor mastic. This was one of 4 products that I found in researching that would break down the pressure sensitive adhesives. I applied it with a acid brush and let it stand 4 hours. Then scraped the floor. The adhesive came up easily. after scraping all the adhesive out, I had an old Hoover floor-mate that I used to clean up the rest of the floor. After it dried, there was not a spot of adhesive anywhere. I did a little touch-up scraping around the corners and around the door, and the floor was clean as a whistle, ready to etch and paint. Be aware however, that if you use a floor scrubber/shampooer after scraping, the adhesive will still be in the stripper and it will dissolve in the water. Clean up of the machine can be a bit involved. In my case, I had an old machine that was on its last legs anyway, and as soon as I finish the shop I'm going to trash it. A mop and bucket would probably work too, but it would have been a bit more work.

I had a 4.5'x17' section of concrete in my basement where old vinyl tiles had been removed. I'm getting ready to epoxy my basement and I needed to prep the area. I didn't feel like wasting money testing for asbestos so I went on the assumption that this mastic does contain it. I didn't want to grind on it and send asbestos dust through my shop vac, which might get sent airborne. I bought 1 gallon of 500MR to start with. I poured about 1 to 1 1/2 cups of it onto a section of the floor and used a small squeegee to spread it around to cover a 3'x3' section. About 45 minutes later, I used the squeegee to test the effectiveness. I was pleasantly surprised to find that all but the thickest patches had completely dissolved. I used the squeegee to move the puddle to a new 2'x3' section. About 45 minutes later, I had the same result so I squeegeed the puddle to a new 1'x3'section. After another 45 minutes, I used some old shirts to absorb the mess and wipe off the floor. That small amount of 500MR removed 90% of the mastic from a 6'x3' section for me. I repeated this a couple of times and got the entire area 90-95% free of mastic and I still had just under 1/2 gallon of 500MR left. I used some Mr. Clean in a bucket of water and scrubbed the floor down and then wiped it dry. The next day, I poured the remaining 500MR on the area and let it soak for 45 minutes. I used a wire brush to loosen any remaining stubborn spots and then wiped up the mess, scrubbed, and washed again. I'm not sure if I used the best process, but it worked very well for me and I got rid of some old worn out clothes that I don't wear anymore. There are small traces of mastic in the pits and grooves of the concrete, and the area still has a brownish tint to it, but I do feel much better about grinding on it now. You will need to clean the floor after using this. It leaves a slippery, oily residue behind that you will want to get rid of. Mr. Clean and plenty of water seems to have done the job pretty well, so I don't think I would recommend spending a lot of money on expensive cleaners. If I was not planning on grinding it, I would give it one more cleaning using laundry detergent in a bucket of water and I am sure it would be fine for anything you might want to do. For the old, brown/black mastic under those old 9"x9" vinyl tiles, 500MR is your product. It works as advertised. I would absolutely recommend to a friend. Better yet, I would tell someone I didn't like NOT to use it so they work their butt off using an inferior product. ;) Per the big, bold warning on the package, DO NOT USE ON WOOD. It will soak into the wood and you will probably not be able to coat it or stain it when you are done.

Works okay. The biggest Pro on this product is the low odor. No chemical smell but does have a slight citrus odor. Should still have some ventilation. The biggest Con is the 4-8 hr wait time. This product works better the longer you leave it on. I tried after 4hrs, 8hrs & 24hr's and 24hr wait removed it the best. I was removing 1990's linoleum from concrete slab and I tried it in patches where I removed the linoleum down to the mastic & just the top layer (paper residue still on the concrete). If you go down to the paper, the recommended usage of 200sqft/Gal might not be enough or if it's down to the mastic 100sqft/Gal will be more than enough.

I used this to remove mastic adhesive after tile was removed from concrete, I think I was expecting this to lift the adhesive leaving bare concrete- it didn't. It did loosen the adhesive, and I was able to remove a large portion but after clean up I still had to go through with goof off and spot clean areas where there were still large patches left.

The product slowly soaked into the mastic creating a big mess. It didn't do much to remove the mastic and the cleanup is still ongoing. We also used cheap corn oil on a small test patch. I would say the Blue Bear performed about 10% better than plain old corn oil and neither did a good job. 6, 12, 24, 48 hours, .... leaving it on longer did not improve performance. My guess is not all mastic is the same so if you're determined to use this product I would recommend you get a small amount to test with. Don't just pour out an entire bottle on your floor. You may be creating a mess that will take weeks to clean up. 4/26/21 - still cleaning up the blue bear + mastic mess. I can't stress enough the need to test a small patch before spreading over a large area. If it works on your small test patch consider yourself lucky. If not, stop! Do not use any more product because you'll need several free weekends and hundreds of dollars to clean up the mess. 6/8/21 - so it is remarkable to me how this product works on some mastic but fails miserably on other mastic. I unfortunately was in the fail group. I can't stress enough to spot test first before using on a large area. I used it on 20% of a basement. I spent hundreds of dollars trying to clean up the mess. I eventually put down two coats of PerfectPrimer and two coats of Drylok dove gray concrete paint. This combination worked great everywhere *except* where I used the MR500 Remover. This mastic was dry and hard. I cleaned it with several products the last being a citrus cleaner that came with the primer. The PerfectPrimer had great adhesion to the mastic. The Drylok concrete paint is made to go directly on concrete but it went down easily on top of the primer. I ran a dehumidifier while priming and painting. On spots where the Blue Bear MR500 pooled up the paint remains a bit tacky. I can only guess is that it is due to oil residue despite hitting it with degreaser and cleaner many times. If it doesn't set in another month I'll try another coat of primer and paint. All I can say is that the MR500 remover is it didn't work for me. It cost me a lot of money to clean up and kept my floor from being perfect when I found something that did work on my floor. I mentioned earlier that canola oil worked about the same as the MR500, but the area where I used canola oil cleaned up easily and was covered by the primer and paint and dried to a nice finish (not tacky). To encapsulate this mastic floor, it would have been far better to skip the MR500 remover, clean, prime with PerfectPrimer then paint with Drylok concreate paint. 7/18/21 - Perfectprimer + Drylok concrete paint over mastic is holding up very well. It's dry, hard, low sheen and non-slip. The area where I used the Blue Bear mastic remover is still tacky (sticky), but it seems to be curing slowly now that I put a box fan on it 24/7. I think a couple more months running the fan will cure it completely.

ADDENDUM: I have since tried using it on larger patches of the yellow mastic. And, at least in my house, the yellow mastic is impervious to Blue Bear. I have a metal floor scraper, and it's brutal trying to get this stuff up, even after soaking it in BB for 4 hours. The Black, it did really well. Even when it needed a few passes, you could see it dissolving and melting a little more each time. But this yellow, it's not even fazed by it. Like spilling water on it. I am going to do some research online to see if anyone has tips. But otherwise, my dream of concrete flooring is done, because I'm not going back to that toxic fuming stuff that I was trying before. That was not anything I ever want in my house again. And I'm not going to grind 1/2 the house with a grinder. :( I have both black and yellow mastic all over my concrete floors after I pulled up linoleum and cheap tiles. I tried a super toxic produce in the kitchen. It definitely got up a lot of the black mastic, but it was horrible with fumes, even with windows and doors open. Blue bear has a smell to it, but nothing that is a problem. I probably should be using a bucket of this stuff, but wanted to test out a small amount before buying a larger tub of it. The bottle came with a sprayer, and so I just sprayed it on the glue. Then I worked it in with a stiff bristle brush and let it sit for a few hours. Then I used a floor scraper on it. Then I put some Dawn in a bucket with water and scrubbed the floor. Then used a sponge and some rags to dry it up. Since it's a soy product, I just washed the tools up after. It's messy--the bucket has a lot of staining from the mastic glue, but I guess that's expected. Still beats toxic mess. I haven't used enough to need a cat liter clean up yet. But may try that later. It got through the mastic and I now see concrete. It still has patches that are tenacious, but I'm going to be buying the big bucket, and I'm betting that will take care of these tough patches. I would say it works as well as the really toxic strippers, but is a lot easier to work with because it isn't so toxic and hard to breathe. Just be ready to get messy.

This stuff took off 67 year-old black mastic that had been used for asbestos tiles on our basement floor. (The mastic was checked for asbestos and had none.) We poured a generous amount on a section and let it sit for an hour before removing. It worked like a dream; it literally dissolved into a black, gooey mess. We used a floor squeegee and a shop vac to get it up off of the floor. If you don't mop up the residue right away, it is very hard to remove the stain (if you should get it on another surface besides the one you are using it on). I got some on the sole of my shoe and tracked it onto another floor and used a little bit of Comet cleaner and a soft rag and rubbed gently to remove the stain. I did get some on my pants, and they now have a black stain that I can't get out. So wear old clothes, old shoes, don't track it in your house and WORK IN SECTIONS. I can't stress that last part enough or you will have a big mess on your hands. This is a great product, you just have to be careful when mopping it up. Be prepared to replace shop vac filters as well.

It works, depending on how thick the bitumen is, may need a couple of times. If the the concrete is smooth a lot easier. If the concrete is rough or pitted not so good. Quite expensive. Not many alternative products ?