A new floor for the Mercedes-Benz Museum

The Mercedes-Benz Museum is a well-known name to many people around the world who are interested in automobiles and architecture. But there is one floor that very few people know about: the top floor of the building. However, its parquet floor has suffered so much over the past 13 years that it had to be replaced with a new one. In order to remove the old flooring without leaving any dust or residues, the craftsmen used several machines from Wolff. Among them is the new Independence Stripper, which can be navigated through the room with the help of a radio remote control and which works extremely time-saving and thoroughly.

The Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart, Germany was opened in 2006 and shows the history of the company with about 150 vehicles and more than 1,500 exhibits. The building is very popular thanks to the exhibition and its spectacular architecture. In 2022 alone, more than 62,500 visitors purchased a ticket for the exhibition. However, there is one area that few get to see: the 8th floor. It is reserved exclusively for high-ranking visitors and is used to hold galas and press conferences. This top floor is characterized by a wonderful panoramic view of Stuttgart's surroundings - from the Mercedes-Benz main plant to the VfB soccer stadium and the vineyards on the outskirts of the city. At the same time, it allows a view inside the museum of its exhibits and the visitors.

The interior design meets the highest design requirements. As a result, the room was fitted with a fine two-layer prefinished long-belt parquet in smoked oak. However, this had suffered so much in recent years that deep scratches and unsightly abrasions marred the surface. The building managers therefore decided to replace it with a new parquet floor. The product installed was Slide Oak Tortora oiled, installation pattern Elio. Haag Bodenwerk GmbH from Stuttgart was entrusted with this task. In order to prepare the floor for the new parquet in accordance with DIN 18365, the old flooring and all adhesions had to be removed as dust-free as possible. For this, the employees of the craftsman's company relied on the quality and performance of the Wolff brand. Five of our devices for removing floor coverings were used in the Mercedes-Benz Museum.

First, the craftsmen used the PS 230 parquet saw and cut approx. 350 mm wide strips into the wood. In order to adapt the saw to the given floor covering, its cutting depth can be continuously adjusted from 0 to 60 mm. The powerful motor enables not only the processing of parquet, but also, with the appropriate saw blade, of mineral substrates. To avoid any dust in the elegant rooms, the team connected the Vacuclean 2 with pre-separator. The Vacuclean 2 is a high-performance industrial vacuum cleaner with two motors, for coarse dirt and dust. It has a cartridge filter with 3 m² of filtration area (dust class M) and a vacuum indicator that allows continuous control of proper operation. The pre-separator is connected upstream of the vacuum cleaner and protects it by separating coarse dirt as well as fine dust. It filters up to 99 percent of the particles. It can be used for floor milling and grinding machines, saws, hand grinders as well as many other electrical devices and can also be used with a corresponding nozzle for vacuuming surfaces.

Once the floor had been prepared in this way, the BiTurbo and Independence strippers were used. Both are used to scrape the floor covering from the substrate. While the BiTurbo stripper has already proven its performance for several years, the Independence is the latest product from Wolff. Its development took into account both user suggestions and the experience gained in recent years. All two machines can remove all textile and resilient floor coverings as well as parquet. The Independence can also remove tiles and sports surfaces. However, compared to many other floor strippers on the market, the Independence has one major advantage: it can be navigated around the room using a one-hand radio control. This means that the user does not have to remain permanently seated on the machine to operate it. It can be steered precisely and is extremely maneuverable. In addition, the Independence is powered by a battery system, making it cordless. This makes work much easier, as there is no need to pay attention to the power supply when operating the machine. Both the BiTurbo and the Independence stripper are characterized by their easy handling. For example, the blades are easily accessible and can be changed quickly. As a rule, they have a width of 35 mm. At the Mercedes Museum, the craftsmen primarily used the Independence Stripper to work on the large areas. In areas that were difficult to access, the smaller BiTurbo stripper was used. In addition, it could be used to remove any residual material that might have remained.

With this clever combination of Wolff machines, the construction site team was able to cleanly remove the glued parquet from the subfloor in the shortest possible time and to quickly transport away the resulting construction debris. The 500 m² area took five employees just one day to complete. A remarkably short time, considering that the building's security technology presented them with a number of challenges. Because the entire building has a very special fire protection system, the fire extinguishing system also reacts very sensitively. Contact with dust could have triggered an alarm and set the extinguishing system into action. For this reason, all walls and ceilings, including all sensors of the system, had to be covered with several layers of protective foil in advance. After the floor had been professionally prepared in this way, the new parquet could be installed in a very short time.