Leveling and raising a floor

[Zen]

Hi

I've got a concrete floor that I need to fix. It's a bit uneven, not too bad, but not good enough to lay a carpet or laminate flooring directly onto.

The thing is, the whole downstairs floor (kitchen and living room) could do to be raised up about 2.5 inches, so I was thinking of laying down wooden battens (47x47mm), levelling them up then laying down 18mm chipboard flooring on them. Then probably laminate flooring on top of those.

Seems to be the most cost effective way of levelling the floor and raising it at the same time. Is this is a good idea, or does anyone have a better one ?

Thanks

[Tim S]

Zen coughed up some electrons that declared:

That would work. Have you also considered floorboards or thicker engineered wood as both of those can be laid direct on the battens?

Seems a good idea as you want to bring it up so much. It would be a good idea to engineer some ventilation in between the battens even if it's just leaving a gap between the ply and the wall and another gap between the skirting and the floor.

Cheers

Tim

[Stuart Noble]

Without ventilation under the chipboard I'd say the battens are sure to rot. I'd top up with more concrete

[Chris J Dixon]

It is certainly possible, but you would have to consider adding underfloor ventilation, and also address how you would get airflow perpendicular to your battens.

I once had a house where something like this had been done. Allegedly, although the whole street was built with solid floors, the original purchaser of this property had insisted on wooden floors, so they had used something like 2 x 1 on its side, laid on dpc membrane on the concrete, then floorboards as usual.

There were only a couple of air bricks, and I had a mortgage condition to add more, though I don't think they really understood what was actually down there.

One small problem was that getting the whole floor evenly supported was a bit tricky. I had to do some work under there anyway, so tried to sort out the areas that were moving, but it was rather like leveling a table ;-)

Chris

[Zen]

Thanks for your comments.

With regards to the damp problem, I should probably add that although it's a concrete floor, it's not resting on the ground. Below the concrete is a layer of sand and below that is the vaulted brick ceiling of the cellar that extends the full width and length of the house.