Traditional sand and cement, and pumped liquid screed. Mixed wet, laid to your levels and cured out to a floor the next trade can work on. Bonded, unbonded and floating build ups, over insulation and over heating pipes.
Pumped anhydrite and cementitious flowing screeds for large open floors, self levelling out to a surface that takes a tile or an LVT with almost nothing to make good.
Mixed stiff, laid by hand and worked to falls. The answer for small rooms, awkward layouts, stair landings, patching into an existing floor and anywhere a pump cannot reach.
Bonded straight onto a prepared slab, unbonded over a membrane, or floating over insulation. The three behave differently and get different depths and different reinforcement.
Where the programme is tight there are wet screeds that take foot traffic in hours and a floor covering in days rather than weeks. You get told what each one costs before you choose.
Wet rooms, plant rooms and washdown areas laid to fall towards the gully, with thresholds and door lines set out so the finished heights work.
Movement joints, bay sizes and perimeter insulation strip detailed so the floor can move once it is heated and loaded instead of cracking to relieve itself.
Traditional sand and cement is roughly one day per millimetre for the first fifty millimetres, so a normal domestic floor is weeks rather than days. Liquid screeds are quicker, and the fast-drying products quicker again, with some ready for a covering inside a week. Drying is also about the building, so heat and air movement matter as much as the product.
Liquid screed is pumped, self levelling and covers a big area fast, which makes it the sensible choice on open plan floors and over underfloor heating because it flows completely round the pipes with no voids. Sand and cement is laid by hand and worked, which suits small rooms, patches, falls to a gully and anywhere a pump cannot get to. Both finish flat. They just suit different jobs.
A bonded screed on a sound slab is usually 25 to 40mm, unbonded 50mm and up, and a floating screed over insulation more again, with cover needed above any heating pipes. The right number comes off your build up and your loading, so it gets worked out for the actual floor rather than assumed off a chart.
Most anhydrite screeds form a thin surface laitance as they cure and it has to come off before an adhesive will bond. That is a light mechanical sand and a vacuum, usually a week or so after the pour. It is a small job that gets skipped surprisingly often, and skipping it is why coverings lift.
Usually yes. Hose can be run a long way and up through a building, so access is rarely the thing that stops it. What we need to know first is where the wagon can stand, how far the hose has to travel and whether the floor is sealed enough to hold a fluid screed, which is what the site visit is for.
Based in Bolton, working across the North West as a matter of course and taking planned work anywhere in the country.