Outline spec - floors

pegdrums

Hi, apologies if this is in the wrong section. As we are doing the outline spec ourselves I thought it may fit here.

We are planning some major renovations to our house. My wife is an architect and I am helping by preparing the outline spec. Step by step.


I am looking for some on advice on floors. Step 1!

Our house is a 50's era bungalow on a concrete slab. The hall and kitchen are exposed concrete, sitting room is weird old laminate tiles, bedroom and bathroom have wood floors. We had the house re-wired and re-plumbed when we moved in 2 years ago and every room has some level of inevitable damage done from the trenches that were made.

We would like to have laminate flooring throughout these rooms as the end result.

1) Do we need to have high spots ground down and low spots filled with self levelling compound?

2) Would it be easier to just pour self levelling compound in all rooms rather than grinding and filling bits?

3) should we remove all the rads before work starts?

After that it's down to us to specify the build up of the floor; moisture/ vapour barrier, underlay, then laminate.

Many thanks

Gurteen1

I’d rip out all the floors, remove the necessary amount of material to allow for your target finish floor height.
Blind off the stone with sand or dust and put down vapour barrier, followed by 150 mm floor insulation and then a sand cement screed on top

Calahonda52

are the floor insulated?

pegdrums

Gurteen1 wrote: »

I’d rip out all the floors, remove the necessary amount of material to allow for your target finish floor height.
Blind off the stone with sand or dust and put down vapour barrier, followed by 150 mm floor insulation and then a sand cement screed on top

Our flooring sits directly on the slab of the house, so other than smoothing off I'm not sure if we'll be able to go with the sand cement screed on top of the vapour barrier. Wouldn't that make it very high once the laminate is laid?

I never thought about the use of sand to blind off the stone though. Good idea.

pegdrums

Calahonda52 wrote: »

are the floor insulated?

Nope. Just before we moved in we had all the plumbing and wiring re-done. Once the carpet was lifted we were left with the concrete base.

I have seen some underlay for laminate that is vapour barrier and soft underlay all in one. Would that do the job?

Gurteen1

Sorry. I re read the original post and see that your house is built on a slab so ripping out the original concrete is not possible.
I suppose the point I was trying to make is that you really need underfloor insulation

pegdrums

No worries.

This is the the underlay I was thinking about putting onto of the slab. It seems to have vapour barrier built in.
https://www.irishflooring.ie/product_info.php?products_id=7954

Laminate on top of that and Bob's your auntie's butcher. Maybe?

policarp

pegdrums wrote: »

Hi, apologies if this is in the wrong section. As we are doing the outline spec ourselves I thought it may fit here.

We are planning some major renovations to our house. My wife is an architect and I am helping by preparing the outline spec. Step by step.


I am looking for some on advice on floors. Step 1!

Our house is a 50's era bungalow on a concrete slab. The hall and kitchen are exposed concrete, sitting room is weird old laminate tiles, bedroom and bathroom have wood floors. We had the house re-wired and re-plumbed when we moved in 2 years ago and every room has some level of inevitable damage done from the trenches that were made.

We would like to have laminate flooring throughout these rooms as the end result.

1) Do we need to have high spots ground down and low spots filled with self levelling compound?

2) Would it be easier to just pour self levelling compound in all rooms rather than grinding and filling bits?

3) should we remove all the rads before work starts?

After that it's down to us to specify the build up of the floor; moisture/ vapour barrier, underlay, then laminate.

Many thanks

If your floor is low enough for floor leveller .i.e. doors can open .go for it.
If not then you might have to grind or take a shaving off the doors.
There should be no
need to remove the rads unless they are in the wrong place.

pegdrums

shaving off the end of each door could be a hassle compared to your other suggestion of grinding down.

I recently read that underlay can deal with small imperfections, in other words there may be no need at all to pour level compound throughout the house.