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John Coyne Newest Member · 12 hours ago12 hr

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Insulated suspended concrete floors.

The 12mm ply will deflect terribly, at a minimum you need 18mm and it needs to be tongue and groove so it spreads the load evenly. You need to glue the joints in the boards so the finished floor is in effect one big sheet.

You could use a thinner insulation something like 18mm xps then 18mm chipboard flooring.

By Russell griffiths · Just now1 min
Expansion provision for Hep2O?

Nick and G and J have it right in practice. I would not clip plastic hot runs tight to the wall, because they need a bit of room to move at bends and changes of direction. On a long straight run I put in a natural offset where I can, and I check the fittings after the first proper heat up, since that is when a pulled joint or a ticking clip usually shows itself.

By stevenlee · 4 hours ago4 hr
Just one big loop per slab?

I would go with what Spinny and torre said and keep the loops fairly even and under that 100m sort of length. A thick slab will even the heat out a lot, so one logical zone can work, but it does make fault finding much harder later. If one loop ever drops pressure you want to be able to isolate it at the manifold, so pressure test each loop on its own before the screed goes down and keep a simple sketch of where each loop runs.

By stevenlee · 4 hours ago4 hr
Is £188k a realistic budget for a 4,446 sq ft refurb?

A bit of an afterthought, but have you costed in the purchase of new tools & machinery?
Part of the reason to do it yourself is that it gives you the excuse to buy all the shiny new toys.😇

By tetris · 10 hours ago10 hr
Insulated suspended concrete floors.

Hi Folks,

Didn't want to create a new thread for another suspended concrete floor insulation question so I hope you don't mind me hijacking this old one.

I currently have suspected suspended concrete flooring in a couple bedrooms and the corridor of my bungalow. The exact construction of the floor is unknown, but it's raised, has a void under it, sounds & feels closer to solid concrete and it sure doesn't feel like suspended wood that I have elsewhere in the house. The floor make-up in the bedrooms is a layer of very old tiles, then underlay + carpet. The corridor has been re-done professionally under previous ownership and looks like a layer of screed (possibly over old tiles) + glued-on LVT, which makes it a very cold floor to walk on.

I'm eyeballing my options to add some floor insulation before I re-decorate the bedrooms and would really appreciate your advice.

Door frame clearance currently is 196cm. Internal walls construction is solid brick, which may make it difficult to raise the clearance to accommodate a raised floor. There's perhaps an extra 10-15mm that I can gain by knocking off the top of the wooden door frame and replacing it with a thin decorative veneer as an easy win.
I don't want to mess with the old tiles, as, given the age of the property, tiles & adhesive might be ACM.

My thinking is along the lines of 25mm PIR (not sure if I need wooden battens between them), then a layer of 8-12mm ply (is that sufficient?), then 2mm underlay & 4mm LVT or 6mm laminate. Perhaps a DPM needs to be placed below or above the PIR?
A total of about 40mm increase in floor level, which potentially sounds like a lot of work for marginal insulation gains and dodgy 193cm door clearances?
Are there any sensible alternatives to keep it under 40mm?

The fallback option is to just lay new carpet with thicker underlay in the bedrooms and replace corridor 2mm glue-on LVT with something like 2mm underlay + 6 or 8mm SPC LVT which I had in my old house and which felt very warm to the foot, so I'm guessing it's got very decent insulating properties. Or just SPC LVT everywhere.

The fallback option results in better door clearances and better quality flooring compared to thinner LVT and laminate.

Your thoughts on how to improve this without resorting to a bulldozer or a concrete breaker are very welcome.

Thank you.

By tetris · 11 hours ago11 hr

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BuildHub Guide: Information about the site : Introduce Yourself

Build Design, Planning, Finance and Legal

House Construction & Structural Issues

Building Trades

Environmental, Alternative & Green Building Methods

Self Build & DIY: General

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