Self-leveling concrete application - GIF

[ToolTalkBot]

Self-leveling concrete application.




Previously:

Excavator asphalt leveling attachment - GIF
Gypcrete floor leveling material - GIF
Leveling recycled asphalt on a road - GIF
Screedsaver MAX - laser leveling screed machine

[Frank S]

maybe water with a little cement dust in it but Concrete? How would the slump of that mixture even be rated?

Sure, it may flow and look like glass for now when he is done, but as it dries will there be bubbles from out gassing?

[BuffaloJohn]

maybe water with a little cement dust in it but Concrete? How would the slump of that mixture even be rated?

Sure, it may flow and look like glass for now when he is done, but as it dries will there be bubbles from out gassing?

We have this in our house (we have hydronic heating - long runs of PEX pipe in the floor with a concrete top). The concrete is batch mixed on site, sand and not gravel. It is pumped into the house. It is called self leveling concrete.

I found one picture that showed the pour:


You can see how runny it is. It dries very smooth, no bubbles, not a hot mix from what I understand, but I don't know much more about it.

[Frank S]

We have this in our house (we have hydronic heating - long runs of PEX pipe in the floor with a concrete top). The concrete is batch mixed on site, sand and not gravel. It is pumped into the house. It is called self leveling concrete.

I found one picture that showed the pour:


You can see how runny it is. It dries very smooth, no bubbles, not a hot mix from what I understand, but I don't know much more about it.

Seeing your I am wondering if some epoxy polymers weren't added to the mix to harden the final surface help seal it and prevent it from chalking. or was it sealed after curing?

[BuffaloJohn]

Seeing your I am wondering if some epoxy polymers weren't added to the mix to harden the final surface help seal it and prevent it from chalking. or was it sealed after curing?

There wasn't any epoxy that I saw. They had a mixer outside, bags of some type of cement, a pile of sand, and water.

The concrete was not the final floor. We have tile and engineered hardwood. Tile is glued down, the hardwood is interlocked and floats on a thin membrane. Also, there are no fasteners into the concrete - none anywhere. It is possible to find the pex it the heating system is running and you have a thermal camera, but if you poke a hole in the pex, that would be a nasty fix. If you need to fasten something down, you use the wall, not the floor.

[Frank S]

There wasn't any epoxy that I saw. They had a mixer outside, bags of some type of cement, a pile of sand, and water.

The concrete was not the final floor. We have tile and engineered hardwood. Tile is glued down, the hardwood is interlocked and floats on a thin membrane. Also, there are no fasteners into the concrete - none anywhere. It is possible to find the pex it the heating system is running and you have a thermal camera, but if you poke a hole in the pex, that would be a nasty fix. If you need to fasten something down, you use the wall, not the floor.

If you are going to have a hardwood floor prefinished snap fit floating is the way to go.
A friend of mine was building his house on Vashon Island WA with the heating system you have, in his garage but he wanted 6 of my car stackers Parking lifts in it. So I laid out the grid where the anchors were going to have to be located and told the contractor not to put any tubing in those areas. He said I can read the grid but that tubing can't SO I pre embedded hollow anchors leaving them stick up to FFL and put plastic sleeves over them. I told him I bet that tubing can recognize those.
He said yeah but my men will be stumbling over them and break their necks I said that's your problem I won't be drilling holes in your tubing now either. I don't think he liked my attitude any more than I cared for his. But my friend was happy, and he was the only one I needed to please.

[BuffaloJohn]

We had to preplan everything that was in the floor as well, kitchen cabinets, etc. We have two places where we have access through the floor for stuff - AC for electrical in the middle of the living room and an access for internet in my office - also in the middle of the floor. We built up special frames for the floor in those two areas and then I went to HD and bought two big orange cones that we put over the frames.

Then, when we floored those areas, I built covers with the flooring that could be punched out from below (there were 16x16 metal boxes in the ceiling of the basement) and when we were ready to move in, I switched out the access covers for the special ones.

Oh, I had another one where we did the same thing for where the TV goes. With all the interconnectivity and devices there, we put Gigabit Ethernet hard wired there. I didn't want to have to put it in the wall because of location, to the floor made sense.