BLUE BEAR 500MR Mastic Remover For Concrete Gallon

Used 509MR to remove black mastic on a painted concrete floor in my basement as part of a home reno. Product worked really well, mastic started dissolving within minutes, about 30 min waiting and a bit of scrubbing and it was dissolved into a solution. I used a lot of blue shop towels to wipe up the slurry/oily product. Gotta say, the soy bean smell/oil smell was strong and didn’t evaporate much. Then the scrubbing to get the oily MR500 off the floor began. TSP worked but not great,a product called Oil Lift from crappy tire worked okay (meh) with a lot of scrubbing (wouldn’t recommend), Dawn dish detergent - no luck at all, Simple Green - not that effective (similar to TSP) and then I tried a product called “CLR Grease Magnet”. So far Grease Magnet has worked the best. Not much smell, no harsh off gassing, and the sticky oil residue is gone. If i had to remove mastic again I would MR500 because the other options to do the job are worse or super unsafe (heat and grinding) but you have to know that clean up will take a lot of labour to clean it up after especially if you have a large area to clean up. One thing I noticed - it does not seem to work on rubber based mastics, the older oil based mastics - in my case worked fine. I think I will try alcohol based windshield washer fluid just out of curiosity, on the Grease Magnet label a bunch of alcohols are listed, when I worked in a petrochemical refinery during the summers while in university we used to clean motor oil and antifreeze spills up with a squeegee and gallon jugs of windshield washer.

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 STORYFirst Attempt: 2 hour soak timeResult: .....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 timeResult: 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.

Left side of picture is after right side is befor. Great product to remove 50 year old black mastic from my concrete floor. Removed old tiles, cleaned then just poured onto floor spread with old broom. Left for 2 hrs. Then used 8 in scraper and the old mastic came up like butter. Very little odor. Little messy cleaning up the soup residue. Then mopped multiple times then used vinegar and detergent for the final clean to remove the residue.

did a great job!!we did small sections at a time. saturated, agitated with a wire brush , then let sit for a few hours.mastic came up better than i expected.No harsh fumes.incredibly fast shipping!! had it 36 hours after i ordered it!!

Well that was a goopy black mess! Here are my tips and comments. I removed ~300ft^2 of black asbestos mastic with this stuff. The final result was adequate. It did the job and I’m not sure much else can do it gets 4 stars. It loses a star because it’s is very expensive.-be prepared for a huge mess. Cover everything with poly. Anything not covered will be covered in black motor oil like goop if it splashes. Wear cheap rubber boots, wear clothes that will go to the trash, have many garbage cans with thick bags. I tried kitty litter to soak it up which worked okay. I bought a cheap floor squeegee which worked well to move the stuff around. I read another review about squeegeeing the goop towards a pile of kitty litter which I did.-it’s going to take a lot of time for each application. I did my area in two stages (~150sf each). Each stage took about 6 hours. Applying only takes 5 minutes. Make sure to get even coverage. Let sit for hours! See my later point about that. Then scrape and scrape and scrape. I didn’t have a floor scraper so used a 6” putty knife which worked but was hard on the knees. Then comes the cleanup which I still don’t have a good way of doing.-let the product sit for way more that the instructions say. My first application I let sit for 2-3 hours then started scraping. Took a lot of elbow grease to scrape it all up. My second application I let it sit for 6 hours and it was much easier and resulted in a much better job (more mastic removed).-each 1gal jug says it does 125sf of area. I used 2 jugs for my 300sf and it was not enough. I could use another jug to clean up all the little spots left over.-my first photo is a before shot. Mastic was thick! Second photo is just after first application. Last photo is the final result. It still looks black but it is bare concrete with little patches of mastic left over. Could use another application.