Given that this thread has been reactivated...
A few years ago, I got a guy from my local pub to lay some vinyl strip flooring (he was a floorer). He used silicone to fill any tiny gaps and washed it down with a sponge.
For days, our dogs kept slipping on the floor. We spent hours scrubbing the floor with alkali based floor cleaners. At a guess, I spent up to 8 hours to remove the excess silicone. It only took him two days to lay the strip flooring.
Needless to say, I stopped recommending him to my customers after that, and, I ended up recutting some of the strips...