Anyone had any experience of using the above, Info required on price, construction-how easy? etc. I assume the suppliers will cut to fit?. I believe there are insulated versions available. Any comments appreciated. Regards Donwill
If you mean a raised concrete floor ,made of pre-cast beams infilled with concrete blocks, well yes, I built one a couple of years ago.
Price? Hard to say, but not much different from slapping it down on the wet earth I'd say. There's less preparation required as it has an air gap..its more stable under possible soil heave or shrinkage..and it goes in very quickly..but of course the beams cost a bit
Once you are done with it, its still needs the standard insulation/DPM/screed anyway..so you are really only looking at leveling and hard coring and a concrete slab versus the blocks and beams.
The suppliers MAKE to fit.
I am not sure about insulation inbuilt per se...the floor is essentially structural only. You seal it with a weak mortar mix washed over the blocks to lock them in place, and do the insulation on top.
DO be aware that the building regs I built to were actually crap in this respect. A raises floor with an arctic draught underneath it loses a LOT more heat than one slapped down on the ground. Conversely if the day is not windy, its a lot BETTER due to the trapped air mass.
4" of insulation is WELL worth going for. Polystyrene, or 2" of Celotex at the least.
I can attest. My last flat was beam and block, above a car port. Feck, was it cold in winter! Having a block of ice as my floor would have been warmer.
I wouldn't use polystyrene, at least not in the way that Ideal Homes did, which was to stick the chipboard panels straight on top with no intermidate supports at all.
It crushed by about 1/2-3/4 by the heaviest used doorways leaving a very unflat floor, which was a sod when I put laminate down.
Maybe they used the wrong density?
On an aside, what is the correct method to achieve a strong screeded floor whilst having a layer of foam under the surface? Yes, I know about spreading the load, pressure etc, but I'm not at all convinced that floating a floor on top of plastic foam of any description is a good idea, the stuff is going to compact sooner or later.
Cheers
Tim
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