Laying A Floor Screed What You Need To Know

1. Laying A Floor Screed: What You Need To Know When constructing any sort of building, there are many things to take into consideration, but one of the important ones is the levelness, or otherwise, of the flooring. The final flooring, which is going to be walked upon, and in the case of something such as a warehouse may also have to carry things like forklift trucks, needs to be as flat as possible. Laying the final flooring straight onto the concrete substrate is never going to produce a floor that is as level as it can be, and so the answer is to cover it with a screed which can produce a much more level surface. For many years now, the traditional screed that has been laid on the concrete has been made of a mix of sand and cement usually in the ratio of one part cement to three parts of sharp sand. Usually, this would be mixed on-site by simply shovelling the materials into a cement mixer, but this is very labour intensive and produces an inconsistent mix, with virtually every mixer load being slightly different from the last one. The screed mix is then barrowed into the building and laid out and levelled by a worker on hands and knees using a trowel. Apart from any other considerations, this is extremely time-consuming and causes delays in the construction process because the screed cannot be walked upon until it has been finally finished and has dried off. Depending upon the area to be screeded, laying it could take several days, so other trades such as plasterers, door fitters, painters and decorators, and so on, just have to wait until the screed is ready. Not only that but laying a screed by hand in this way is never going to produce a totally level finish. The regularity of the surface, which is often described as

2. the waviness of it, is measured based upon the amount of deviation under a straightedge laid upon it over a distance of two metres. This is described as the Surface Regularity and is described as SR1, SR2, or SR3, depending upon the amount of gap measured by a slip gauge. READ MORE UK Screeds Ltd 5 Thorpes Field Alvescot England Bampton Oxfordshire OX18 2QF 0800 197 8802 info@ukscreedsltd.co.uk https://www.ukscreedsltd.co.uk/