Floor Levelling

[Ronald Murray]

Hello My daughter & I are remodeling an old house. The floors are too uneven to lay down a sub-floor to solve the problem. Can someone give me some guidance in how to level the floors prior to laying the plywood? Or maybe a website that explains the process of leveling an uneven floor. I understand there may be a product available called floor leveler. When I ask about it at the hardware store , I just get blank stares. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance. ron

[--Shiva--]

go to the places that sell tile... OR a bigger lumber yard... 2 kinds, 1 is concrete based, and the other is not, and BOTH you trowel on. if its further out than that, look into crawling underneath and doing some serious jacking.

--Shiva--

[todd]

I did it about 3 years ago prior to putting down a Pergo floor in my office. I used a levelling compound called Jet Set (I think). It basically looks like dry cement which is mixed either with water or with a white liquid that the construction guys call "milk" and poured out. It's supposed to be self-leveling, but I rented a large float from the Borg and used that to level it.

todd

[todd]

Correction, the product was "Jif Set".

todd

[Phil Crow]

Ron, First, a few questions:

1. Is this a wood (framed) floor or is it a concrete slab?
2. If it's wood, do you have access to the underside?
3. How much $$ do you want to spend?
4. Will y'all be living there, or are you doing a 'quick fix' to sell the place?
5. What kind of flooring are you putting in?

I think if you answer those, then you've got a real good post for alt.home.repair. That's the first place to post a question of this sort. If you get no love from the home repair guys, try it again here.

-Phil Crow

[Mike]

OK, let's define a few terms. In an old house we always aspire for "level" but bottom line is "flat". How flat is flat enough depends the finish product that goes on the floor. The manufacturers of hardwood flooring or the Pergo-like products will have minimum specifications so check. With other flooring like tile or sheetgoods it depends on what is visually acceptable to you. Generally you'll want less than

1/4" in 8ft, perferably less. Lay a long straight edge on the floor with a light behind it. Fill the hollows with something like FixAll or a leveling product. You'll need to trowel it out, work fast but don't worry about finish.

Maybe another thing to check is the moisture content of the floor if installing some flooring materials.

Mike

[Lawrence A. Ramsey]

[someone]

If you have access to the bottom of the floor you can simply shim the floor. When I was straightening out my flooring, I used a ton of sawn wood shingles and hammered them between the floor joist and the bottom side of the flooring.

It took quite a while, but its fairly non destructive.