Levelling concrete floor

Hello,

I've looked at several posts on this but can't find any relevant advice.

  1. I'm going to lay laminate over a concrete floor in my kitchen
  2. The floor is totally uneven, the highest point being the farthest away from the entrance to the kitchen (which adjoins to my living room)
  3. I'm struggling to see how self-levelling compound would help me as if I bring the level of the kitchen floor up to the highest point I will have a step down to the lounge all be it only an inch or so.
  4. This means I'll have to bring the level of both my lounge and my living room up to match the highest point in the kitchen.

Am I going to have to break the floor up in the kitchen an re-lay it? Can anyone advise me on the best solution please?

Thanks

Reply to
tvmo
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I had a job as site supervisor at a school a couple of years ago and about 5 years ago, a new classroom was added. The concrete for the floor arrived late on Friday afternoon and didn't have enough water in it. The result was a very uneven floor. To get round the unevenness, they hired what I can only call a concrete router. They used it to bring back some levelness to the floor. I have no idea what it cost to hire, but I hope some one else can come up with an answer for you.

Dave

Reply to
Dave

I have just seen a garage floor getting worked over by a gadget that amazed me. It is like a traditional floor polisher used in offices but had a large cutting disk instead of a brush under it.

A few minutes use leveled a really bad garage floor.

I was told you can hire them. The disks are very expensive but the results are well worth it.

Reply to
EricP

But there's no need to Level all the floor ie just to the point where it needs leveling. So long as it is alost level there is no need to worry about its finish as you're laying laminate over the floor.

Reply to
George

Would you use one in the kitchen though MrP? cough! cough! where's the door..bump,ow!.

Reply to
George

Having the concrete ground smooth would be one solution - you could even get the tools off Amazon if we were in the US..

That would still leave you with a sloping (but smooth) floor though, if it's an even gradient. Is it an even gradient or all over the place? What about any existing cabinets, are they standing on the uneven floor, and hence higher at one end than the other? sloping??

Could you do something like lay a thin foam or hardboard underlay first to give you a good surface? You'd still have a slope and a step, but a smaller one. Get the threshold strip right and you probably wouldn't notice it. Having a nice wide strip tends to make people either step onto or over it, so there wouldn't (shouldn't?) be a trip hazard.

Reply to
PCPaul

Why is it so uneven? If it was that badly laid, then it could be argued that it would be sensible to rip it up. That would allow a) the floor to be laid properly; b) insulation to be incorporated.

There are so many questions before making a decision. Is it possible to lose some or all the height difference under units where it might not matter? Would it be difficult to re-lay the floor to line up to both the livng room and the back door?

Of course, anything will have costs - which will probably impact your decision.

While you are doing the work, you have the opportunity to reconsider use of laminate flooring and choose something nicer.

Reply to
Rod

Self-levelling compound doesn't actually make the floor "level". It makes it smoother and more even. The problem is that imprecise terminology is used, and people confuse the terms level, smooth and even, which can all mean very different things.

The most sensible option is to use the poorly-named "self-levelling compound" to make the floor "even" enough to take the laminated floor. My own kitchen floor is not level. It slopes evenly from one end to the other, with about a 25mm fall, and this doesn't worry me.

However, if you are adamant that the floor needs to be exactly level (all at the same elevation above Ordnance Datum) to achieve this, then you could lay a sand/cement screed which varies from about 30mm to

5mm, adding 5mm to the highest part and 30mm to the lowest to give a net overall levelling effect of 25mm.

Alternatively, you could use self-levelling compound to provide a screed of zero to 5mm thickness in the areas that need only that much uplift, with a sand and cement screed in the areas needing an uplift of 5mm to 25mm.

I would try very hard to avoid doing either of those, simply because of the 25mm or 35mm step you will end up with.

Others have suggested specialist tools to lower the floor. I have no experience of these so cannot comment. But I have used a scabbling tool, which is normally used to prepare a finished concrete pour to accept more concrete on top, to lower a concrete slab that was poured too high by 15-20mm at one end. That could be used to lower high part of your floor, but it would take some time and generate a lot of noise. The tool is either air driven (you would need to hire a compressor), petrol driven or electric.

Here's a petrol driven scabbling tool available for hire:

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type I have used is air powered, similar to that shown as "UV3R" in the following catalogue:
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Reply to
Bruce

Sorry, should have been 25mm or 30mm.

Reply to
Bruce

You wet the floor George!

There's more dust brushing it up.

Reply to
EricP

Thanks very much for the advice guys, much appreciated.

Should have explained, the kitchen is an empty shell at the moment as I've ripped out the old kitchen with a view to replace it with new units.

The problem with brining the floor level is going to be that the kitchen floor will then be higher than the rest of the rooms in the house, which means I'll either need a step or I'll have to raise the other floors up.

I like the sound of the scabbing tool as opposed to digging the whole floor up.

Cheers.

Reply to
tvmo

How big an area is too high?

It's hard work, but I've done it over a square meter by honeycombing the surface to the correct depth with an SDS drill and a medium size bit (say 20mm), then removing it down to drilled depth with a chisel bit.

Reply to
dom

Was it one of these or similar?

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Reply to
The Medway Handyman

The best solution would be to rip up the existing floor and replace it with a new one including insulation and a damp proof membrane.

It can then be finished with a screed to the level of the floors in the surrounding rooms, leaving a flat surface onto which you could lay a much nicer tiled floor rather than ghastly laminate, which isn't really suitable for a kitchen anyway.

By the time you would otherwise tit around with the floor, then those of the other rooms you will have created a Ben Hur scale epic. It really isn't worth it.

Reply to
Andy Hall

i would have thought a slight slope in kitchen floor is good, if a pipe bursts at night the water will go out of the door!

[g]
Reply to
George (dicegeorge)

Whatever for? There is no reason why a floor needs to be level as long as it's flat

Exactly and, by the sound of it, that won't be level either

, leaving a flat surface

onto which you could lay a

Why can't you allow people to make their own decisions?

rather than ghastly laminate

I'm not a fan either but the OP's taste is nowt to do with me so I keep my trap shut, and I suggest you do the same. "Nice" and "ghastly". You sound like some silly old tart on a makeover show.

, which isn't really

There are grades that are suitable but I guess you wouldn't want to know that.

Reply to
stuart noble

That depends on how out of level it is. You will also note that I didn't say that it did have to be level within itself, just that it could be level with the floors of the surrounding rooms at the points where it joins them.

However considering that a variation in level of an inch (25mm) is mentioned, taken over the floor of a room that is quite a lot and may well be noticable in regard to what is done on the walls in terms of decoration.

It may or may not be depending on whether the other two rooms are level with one another. Clearly if they are, the kitchen floor can be made level with them as well as flat and level itself.

I do, even if they are the wrong ones. It can be a learning exercise for them.

Why? Laminate does look like cheap plastic crap, it is sensitive to water and is easily dinged and scratched. It's noisy and clicky underfoot. Kitchens are high traffic areas that involve water.

It's quite reasonable to point out that laminate is not suitable for kitchens.

I would actually argue that it's not suitable for anywhere apart from lining a skip, but that would be stretching this more towards an opinion.

However, "ghastly" is a pretty good adjective to sum it up.

Suitable for what? You mean that they don't swell and buckle quite so much when they get wet?

Reply to
Andy Hall

I certainly wouldn't dig up a floor for the sake of an inch

Patronising as ever.

It has its place. If I had a young family I might well consider it in certain areas.

, it is sensitive to

There are water resistant grades, just as there is waterproof chipboard, and it most certainly isn't easily damaged. It happens to be the chosen flooring for a number of recital rooms where grand pianos weighing well over half a ton with metal castors are wheeled about on a daily basis.

It's noisy and clicky

Not on a solid floor it isn't.

Just spare us your elitist ranting. Laminate is an inexpensive way for a lot of people to have low maintenance, practical flooring. Strange concept I know but maybe they regard their houses are somewhere to live while they get on with more interesting things.

Reply to
stuart noble

So you think it's acceptable for things to be rolling around on the floor?

Here we have a situation where the floor is a mess and the discussion has been around complicated and messy scraping techniques that probably won't work for this degree of problem and then other rooms are going to have to be disrupted to fix it as well.

It's simply not worth it. Replacing the floor is the quickest, most cost effective and best way to achieve the required result and is doing the job properly as opposed to bodging.

Hardly. All I have said is that the use of laminate in a kitchen is a really bad idea, which it is. If somebody would like to spend the money on demonstrating that for themselves they can do so, I'm not stopping them. Fortunately laminate is sufficiently cheap that the cost of learning won't be very high. I don't think that it's patronising to point out to somebody that they would be making a mistake.

Where? It's difficult to see any places where there isn't a much better solution.

I've seen rooms like this. With scratches all over them and grit pushed into the surface.

I beg to differ. It is.

What on earth are you burbling about now?

It's about the worst way to have low maintenance, practical flooring - even worse than carpet if used in kitchens and bathrooms.

The strange concept is why anybody would want to cover their floor in clicky plastic.

Reply to
Andy Hall

Who plays ball games in the kitchen? What things are going to roll about?

Unless you change the levels in the other rooms, all you can do is flatten the floor with the existing slope. What precisely would digging up the floor achieve?

You've said that *it* (regardless of the grade or quality) *is* crap and fit only to line a skip. I call that pompous, arrogant, and elitist.

If you can't see why a this is a practical floor covering with kids around then I give up. It seems to work well for a lot of people, but I guess they're all wrong

I think you see what you want to see.

Reply to
stuart noble

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