Parquet Bitumen Bubbles

[hoyboy]

I brought a property a year ago. It has 50ish year old parquet flooring which I've since sanded and oiled (hardwax oil). The parquet seems to have been attached with bitumen. This black stuff is bubbling up at the edges slowly. Does anyone know why this is and what I can do about it? I just glossed a whole load of it and the next day bubbles had already appeared?

Hope you can help.

 

[chkee]

without further information I would hazard a guess that this has only happened since you applied the hardwaxoil?

if so, this 'could' be the problem.. (I am no chemist so please forgive the clumsy explanation also, the use of certain terms may be incorrect)

both bitumen and the carrier in hardwaxoil originate from crude oil distillation - it may be that the 'lighter' petrochemical carrier used in the hardwaxoil is reacting against the bitumen as a solvent and breaking it up.

hence the bubbling..

remedies? remove the hardwaxoil and neutralise the paraffin, mechanics use products to netralise oil spills and perhaps one of these would work, they probably contain something like HPT200 http://www.bioexport.co.uk/HPT100_200.htm

thats all I can offer, for what it is worth

 

[hoyboy]

Thanks but I've one floor that's not been oiled yet and another which I varnished instead. The bitumen is oozing out the edges of all of them.

It's a veeeerrry slow ooze though - just as though it's heated slightly or something. However, I can't think of any change that's happened to all the floors together, save for sanding. Saying that... there wasn't really any heating in the flat before me (just a couple of gas fires) but then that's been off for the last few months or so anyway...

 

[WoodYouLike]

Did this start after sanding? (movement and 'heat' from sanding?)

 

[hoyboy]

Yes it did - but I sanded in Feb and assumed it would have settled by now if that were it?

 

[WoodYouLike]

I truly hate bitumen. Not sure what happened here, could be a combination of things: sanding, heating, higher humidity.

 

[hoyboy]

Yeah - I'm not too keen on it now either. There doesn't seem to be any neat way of covering it up either. The skirting is concrete moulded on the walls too and is badly chipped and damaged on the edges so just runs into the bitumen in a bit of an ugly mess - which I can't fill because the bitumen is moving.

Any idea if i should worry about the lumps oozing up though - I'm guessing in a very slow way my floor is sinking?

Also, I've tried painting over the bitumen with stain stop paint but it still shows through and colours it. Do you know of anything I can cover it with?