How to remove sticky tape residue from a carpet
As the UK begins to open offices back to their employees, you may find that the floor has a yellow and black sticky tape or “social distancing tape” sprawled across the floor to segment workstations and walkways, but how can you remove the sticky tape adhesive residue from the carpet when you start to lift the restrictions? In this handy guide, the Wessex team have been testing a range of chemicals to do just this and bring your carpets back to their former glory.
Fortunately, corporate offices tend to have very hard-wearing flooring due to their high footfall. This makes cleaning them a lot simpler for janitors. This post will showcase the products that we found worked best to remove the sticky tape residue.
Let’s see how you can do this!
First on the list is a solvent-based gel spot remover that, once fed down onto the tape lines, gently work in and given several minutes to dwell before either wiping away with a damp cloth or, ideally, rinse extracting. The best that we found for this is the Prochem E840 Citrus Gel. This Gel is hard-working ad cuts right to the core of the adhesive residue – it doesn’t smell too bad either
Something to be aware of; whilst using a liquid solvent would possibly be quicker, it could cause a bitumen-bleed stain to appear, as the liquid solvent softens the bitumen (or tar) in the tile backing and allows it to ‘wick up’ to the surface. On carpet tiles, it is advisable to use E840 Citrus Gel instead.
If you have larger floor areas to tackle and are being presented with long lines of adhesive residue as the tape is taken up, then a more cost-effective method, in both product and labour, would be using S789 Power Burst. This is a super-strength, alkaline powdered pre-spray, that once diluted into a sprayer, can be applied to the flooring area and gently agitated in, and then left for 10-15 minutes to help dissolve the adhesive.
Once this has been followed, then the carpeted area will benefit from being rinse extracted with B109 Fibre & Fabric Rinse or a similar detergent. After the carpet has dried, this should have cured the problem.
If you are still faced with stubborn adhesive or marks following the above, consider adding B845 Citra-Boost to the Power Burst. This is a specially blended mix of detergents and solvents that works as a boosting additive and can help to enhance your pre-treatment. NOTE: Pre-test if using bitumen-backed carpet tiles.
And this about sums it up. After our testing on multiple carpet types and multiple chemical solutions, above is our guide to exactly what you need in the office to clear adhesive tape residue.
As always, please consult the Safety Data Sheets before using these products.