Should I remove tack strips before you install new carpet?

Here is a transcription, if you prefer to read instead:

“Tack strip removal can be difficult. It can be complicated, and it can be expensive. So, you really want to be careful before you consider taking off tack strip to put in new carpet. The reason is is that if you’re on a wood sub-floor and you want to remove tack strip to put it back on, that’s not a big deal. Because, whenever you remove the tack strip, those nails don’t leave behind divots. They leave behind little tiny holes where the nails were. However, if you’re going to be removing tack strip off of concrete, what happens is is when that tack strip comes off since those former tack strips are nailed in, they leave pretty big divots behind. And those divots are about three to four inches away from each other around the perimeter of the room, which makes it very difficult and complicated to put new tack strip back in.

So, what can be done if you insist that that needs to be done or if you feel it absolutely has to be done? We can go in and we can cut the tack strips down into three or four inch strips rather than the normal four foot wide strips. We can cut them down into three or four inch strips and we can glue them down. It does cost a little bit more to do that because it’s more
labor, and we have to come back another day to finish it up because, the glue takes about 24 hours to dry in most cases.

Now, why would you want to remove the tack strip? That’s one question you should ask yourself. Well, if you have water damage and then some cases there is urine damage and urine has penetrated those tack strips, I completely understand why you would want to remove those. There is a situation though, where sometimes you can go ahead and just bleach them. Add maybe a 10:1 water to bleach ratio of hot water and bleach, and that bleach will kill the bacteria which is causing the ammonia to smell. In that case, you can remove the bacteria and then spray Kilz, oil-based Kilz, on top of that tack strip and the odor will be completely gone. So, either way you choose is fine with us, but give us a call so we can discuss it.”