Basement tile and adhesive removal with pictures.

[Paul Winka]

I am "unfinishing" an unsightly basement for a rental. The basement floor has chipped tile that leaves an adhesive residue behind. It's not so sticky, but will look shoddy if not addressed. Unfortunately, the tile needs elbow grease to come up, and it breaks off in pieces, not one at a time.

 My intention is just to remove that tile and adhesive and leave the plain concrete; I am not going to paint it. 

What tools and materials will make short work of getting the tile up in the first place, then removing the adhesive? I heard that a sander will quickly get gummed up with adhesive and won't be effective. If there is an alternative solution like putting carpet squares over it, please provide input on that too. 

It looks like this: 

[Jeff Copeland]

A chipping hammer and some elbow grease is probably your best bet - there's no silver bullet. And it will be nearly impossible to get up all of the adhesive.

Perhaps more importantly, it's very possible those are old asbestos floor tiles. Make sure you use appropriate PPE and disposal techniques. 

And, for that reason, you probably want to avoid sanding (or anything else that makes the asbestos friable), and you may be better off leaving them in place and just going over them with new flooring. Laminate (or carpet squares as you mentioned) is pretty forgiving when it comes to going over older flooring.