how do I treat an oil-soaked wood floor?

[gmoney]

Moving into new studio space, and the space previously was a machine shop, so a lot of the old wood floor area is soaked with machine oil.

Would it be possible to somehow seal or treat it so that people could walk barefoot on it without getting filthy?

It's a big room and would cost a lot to put new flooring down, and if we tried sanding it down, we'd have oily sawdust in the air for weeks.

any ideas? :)

[old mark]

1. I do this a lot, but on a small scale: I have collected a lot of old

military rifles over the years, soaked with decades of grease and dirt.
I use that bathroom cleaner "scrubbing bubbles", just as directed on the can. Spray it on, let it work for a few minutes, hose it off.
No great chemical fumes, no real work, not time consuming. Works great, penetrates the surface and removes the oil and crap from the wood.
Don't have any idea how much space you are cleaning, and it could get a bit expensive, but try it and see what you think.
It's the best method I have found in over 40 years of doing this.

Good luck.

mark

[gmoney]

4. well, the room is about 1800 square feet...

the worst of it is about half that space... might be about 900 cans of scrubbing bubbles

[old mark]

6. The only other thing I know that works is dish washing liquid...

Put some on a bucket of hot water, mop it on, let it work, mop it off with a different mop and hot clean water.

Not as good, but it will cut grease without terrible chemical degreasers.

mark

[harmonicon]

2. have a drink and forget about it?

Think about what you'd budget for fixing the floor, and put that much money into booze that you'll keep in the studio. Then, every time you walk in and don't like the oily floor, just drink until you don't care anymore.

I don't have oily floor problems, but the basic principle works for me often enough.

[Kali]

3. if the oil goes deep, sanding won't help

but if you do sand, you won't have sawdust in the air for weeks. In fact it really isn't too bad of a job. (she said, after having sanded a large room 8 years ago and never doing the edges or putting any finish on it}

What have you tried so far?

[frogcycle]

5. kind of like you would treat a gin-soaked uncle

just avoid it until it dries out


:)

[gmoney]

7. Thanks folks!

[hippywife]

8. Two words:

area rugs.

Maybe you can locate some inexpensive carpet remnants on craigslist or even a nice hodgepodge of different area rugs.

[datasuspect]

9. fire cleans and purifies all

[spinbaby]

10. The solution may be to oil the floor

What I'd do is to scrub down the floor with something like Simple Green and a long-handled scrub brush. Then, after the floor's thoroughly dried, apply a Danish oil finish. I think any other kind of finish may not stick if there's already oil in the floor, but Danish oil should do it.

[Schema Thing]

11. This will sound crazy

but a truck mounted steam-carpet cleaner could probably make fast work of that. It wouldn't be good for wood floors, but it wouldn't be that bad either -the machine immediately collects back 95% of the water it puts down, and a good one really is using water so hot that it really is steam. And obviously, these floors have already been abused.

After that, you should be able to just sand and refinish like a normal wood floor, or you may like the ruggedness of it as it is.

[mopinko]

12. linoleum?

something i learned one of the few times i ever watched oprah- the secret to cleaning things easily is time. i have a garden sprayer that i keep filled with a weak detergent solution, like murphy's, orange oil, whatever. before i start cleaning anything, i spray it down a few times, at intervals of 10 minutes to a half hour. for this i would use a stronger solution than usual. but still, i would spray it down at least 6-8 times, maybe more. (heck, i would probably spray it everyt time i walked by for a few days.) after that i would use a carpet/floor machine on it, but i agree with the person just upthread here that the big commercial steam cleaning would be the best.
but look at it this way- you can't really fuck it up any worse.

[Heidi]

13. I have a wood floor in my studio.

The "new" studio is now about two years old, and oil and paint spots on the floor are part of making art. If I were you, I'd follow other DUers' advice and rent a commercial floor cleaner and try to remove enough of the grime that one could go barefoot on the floor. Then I'd seal it. My studio floor is sealed with a kind of citrus oil (and wax?) mixture. And no, the floor is not as perfect as it was the day it was installed, but I very much love the way wood assumes a character and shows its life experience.

It seems to me that the main issue is getting the floor clean enough that you can walk barefoot on it without getting dirty feet. I think the above would do that. I love your work, and I think a rugged-looking, but cleanish, floor would be a perfect look for your studio. After deep cleaning the wood, and possibly sealing it with oil/wax, as I've done, just mop it once in a while with a mild floor soap like Murphy's. :hi:

[Pool Hall Ace]

14. Oil-dri

says my husband.

http://www.oildri.com/indusauto/index.html

[MineralMan]

15. Lots of good suggestions, but...

If that machine shop had been in operation for more than a year or so, nothing you do will fix the situation. You might be able to remove the oil from a very thin layer of the wood on the floor, but, it will have soaked into that wood thoroughly over time, and will migrate back up to the surface again.

Your best solution will be to cover the floor with something non-permiable and start afresh. One of the sheet vinyl products will probably serve best, and it's available in solid colors like gray, etc. It doesn't have to be glued to the floor, but can simply lie there like rug.

If you really think you want to try to clean up the wood, then work in a small area with the technique you plan to use, then wait a week and see how it's going. Odds are high that the oil will migrate right back to the surface.

I hate to be a spoilsport, but that's the reality.