Ideas for pontoon flooring

The entire 24x8 area will be a floating dock for my small pond. We'll use it for swimming, etc.

The old carpet is off -- but much of the sticky glue remains. I gummed up my RO sander trying to even smooth it. I bought some oil porch paint.

I'm looking for a very low cost way to cover the exposed plywood. New carpet seems like too much hassle and a bit costly. A role of rubber might be ideal, but probably too costly. Is the paint even going to adhere to the old glue?

Any suggestions appreciated.

 

What about something like elastomeric roof coating?

But it says best for metal, tile or built up roofing -- which is not what I have.

 

If the surface is clean and dry, the elastomeric roof coating will work fine. Truck bed liner also works great and is very similar in composition to roof paint.

 

Well -- I've pressure washed w/ tsp & bleach, but the old carpet glue is still there, some sticky, some peeling.

I can do a bit more scrapping to get the really loose stuff off, but that's about all I can do w/o chemicals, so yeah, I'm looking to apply the roof coating or porch paint over whatever is there. It will be dry -- and cleaned -- but not stripped down to bare wood for sure.

Should I try the porch paint? Valspar oil based. Or is the roof coating a better bet?

 

If you use a 7" or 9" disk sander with 16, 24 or 36 grit on it, you'll easily remove the old glue. Yep, it'll clog a bit, but if you have a variable speed sander, use a low speed and keep moving, so you don't melt the glue. You can rent these sanders and stock up on disks, as you'll eat up a number of them.

There's two types of roof paint, one is asphalt based and usually comes in black, white or silver. These can't be over painted. The other type is acrylic and can be over painted. Check the label, if it says petroleum distillates anywhere, then you probably can't paint over it.

Porch paint is fairly durable, but nothing compared to truck bed liner paint. Truck bed liner is designed to take a whipping and remain stuck. Roof paint, not so much.

Pressure washing and chemicals will not do much to carpet adhesives, as you've learned. You have to grind it off. Sprinkle flour (yeah, raid your other half's kitchen supply and don't get caught) on the tacky areas and pack it in good. place wax paper over these floured spots and stomp on it to really pack it in. It'll help keep your sand paper from clogging so quickly. Use the coarsest grit you can find, the coarser the better. I've removed this stuff before and it will grind off, but it's tedious with anything smoother than 36 grit. 24 works good and 16 grit will wear the hide off anything.

 

Does your dock have shade? If mostly in full sun are the swimmers barefoot, watch the color as it may get hot! Painted ply willalso be very slick when wet, as PAR mentioned a rougher surface or sand/paint moght work.

 

Take the oil porch paint back.

If you're going for cheap and easy, I would roll on a coat of latex porch and floor enamel, then sand off the lumps with 80 grit by hand. Fold the sandpaper in quarters (fold in half width ways and then length ways and then rip one of the folds to the center, this allows you fold it all up without a gritty side rubbing on another gritty side) and then use big sweeping arm movements, not little scrubby movements. You don't have to get too involved with it. Clean it off and then roll on a second coat of latex porch and floor enamel.

The first coat of latex paint will somewhat solidify the rubbery bits and allow them to be sanded without all the clogging you get now. The second coat will smooth over most roughness.

I lived in an area where there were hundreds of rental pontoon boats and the carpet would rot them out. What they did there was replace the decks and then glue on a common rubber roofing product, it was like inner tube rubber in various widths, 8-10-12- feet etc. Then they would glue on the new indoor outdoor carpet so there was no troubles with the carpet holding water and rotting the ply.

 

The dock will be in the sun at least half of the day. I have white for the porch paint and would use similar for any other coating.

The sun is also a consideration for the coating -- it will get a lot of sun. In the winter I could cover it to maybe add a bit more life.

So, what's the best value choice?
- oil porch paint - 2nd coat w/ sand additive - Valspar - urethane (dries hard and glossy)
- latex porch paint - 2nd coat w/ sand additive
- elastomeric roof coating http://www.lowes.com/pd_139941-29-5530-1-30_429
- bed liner -- probably more $ than I want
- carpet -- probably more $ than I want
- ultra tough / cabellas tuff coat -- $85/gal x 4 gal -- more $ than I want

Of course if the top 3 options are horribly lousy, then maybe I pony up a bit more $. But it's something I can easily spot repair if it makes it through each summer.

Do I really need to remove all the old glue? I could try 30ish grit on my 6" RO sander -- but the 80 I was using was loosening up the glue, sucking it up into the sander and heating up enough to start gluing sander parts together!! Took me an hour to clean up the sander after only using it for 10 minutes.

Thanks again.

 

I saw this at Lowes the other day. Lots of different colors and they also had some type of cleaner/prep too. It was called DECK RESTORE - Deck Restore Liquid Armor Resurfacer

 

If you have access to a roofing (shingle) shovel, try that on the glue, or a flat-bottom spade - might get the worst of it off before sanding.

As for paint, I like the Super paint from Sherwin Williams, think other paint stores have similar versions. It is expensive, but goes on easy, has good coverage and is very durable.

Also, local hardware store has large rubber tiles that look like bricks - you could put those down with Liquid Nails and not worry about old glue underneath (this is assuming you have protected surface underneath). It would probably not be inexpensive and would get hot in the sun, but would be soft on the feet.

 

What's the concern with the oil paint? It's this one:
http://www.lowes.com/pd_48232-4-009...L=?Ntt=Valspar+Oil+Porch+and+Floor&facetInfo=

Why do you suggest latex instead of the oil? Just asking. I've been painting my house and using BM latex. I also have to redo my covered porch floor,and was suggested to use an oil base for flooring. So I thought I'd test some oil paint on this pontoon floor project. But I don't want to create myself a bigger headache than I have.

I see your point about putting on coat 1 to seal up the rubber, etc -- then rough sand to knock down the big stuff -- then a 2nd coat with a bit of non slip additive.

 

There is a $19. 4' x 8' white plastic at Home Depot check it out near FRP. Also I bought rubber roof on Ebay for $73. 9' x 22'

 

Clean up mostly. I think also they have developed latex to as good as or better than oil, plus a little "wetness" on the project won't hurt latex but will be a very bad start for oil. I don't know how well oil sticks to rubber/contact cement. Latex seems to stick to things good, I painted my truck with it once and never had any trouble with it coming off, it just looked kind of hillbillish.

I re-did a small sailboat that had carpet glued to the walls and ceiling that had sunk and everything was nasty with mildew. The boat wasn't worth enough to get too involved so I just ripped the carpet out and didn't hardly remove any of the rubber or carpet fuzz. I pressure washed it and rolled on a coat of latex porch and floor enamel then sanded with 80 grit, then another coat of paint.

When it comes to anti-skid, it doesn't take much at all, so test out a patch on something. I mean like a few small grains per square inch works, and it's best if the anti-skid is top coated with paint, so maybe the left over rubber roughness will be enough for anti-skid. Another ant-skid approach is to sprinkle salt onto a fresh coat of paint and then that will dissolve, leaving a roughened texture to the paint itself which forms the anti-skid.