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the concrete is (finally) done and it is.......a garage floor


Patrick

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As @Russell griffiths
pointed Out numerous times... if you dont go over the poured slab often  and quick,  again and again , you be ending up with a garage floor. So we had the concrete ordered for morning and ready with 4guys to spread and level, tamper and float.

Pouring went smooth. Pumping was good.

But when we started tampering and levelling the concrete,  Murphys law kicked in:

-concrete went off a lot faster than my groundworkers seen in quite a while

-one Of the guys (concrete pump driver) had a stroke and needed medical attention:which took 2hours until ambulance arrived...taking out 1 labourer to take care of him

 

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So we where trying to get it done as best of my(our) skills. Managed levels and no massive dents (unlevel In a few spots but very minor /mm) . Managed getting it fairly smooth . But when it came to doing details/corners, concrete was already too hard to work it ... well , now we need to lay floor over it (later) anyways . Just thinking if that is already good enough to work with tiling on top or if we need to go over it with self levelling compound (I think that's overkill) ..

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That's bad luck - I mean who could forsee the driver having a stroke!

 

Our basement floor was similar and we just used some self levelling compound ahead of laying Karndean. It's a fairly inexpensive solution.

 

Were you planning to power float and leave as finished concrete?

 

There are decorative micro screeds that give the same effect and resin (which we have on our ground floor) is a good alternative also - very hard wearing, nice to look at and gives you a continuous finish (no joints to get grubby).

 

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7 hours ago, Bitpipe said:

Were you planning to power float and leave as finished concrete?

 

I did- but now we gonna have a regular wooden floor on top of it- by the look of it today , we might not even need a self levelling compound - it is still fairly straight ..

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13 minutes ago, Dave Jones said:

block and beam allways. Conc is bloody hard work and never bang on level.

 

But you can't do the insulated raft style in block and beam.

 

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14 minutes ago, Dave Jones said:

block and beam allways. Conc is bloody hard work and never bang on level.

This is a block and beam ?

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1 minute ago, Bitpipe said:

 

But you can't do the insulated raft style in block and beam.

 

Yes you can- Insulated block and beam - instead of blocks , there is insulation. A LOT.

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1 hour ago, Patrick said:

I did- but now we gonna have a regular wooden floor on top of it- by the look of it today , we might not even need a self levelling compound - it is still fairly straight ..

 

That's good, sensible to be pragmatic.

 

This may be your first 'didn't go as planned' self build event but it wont be your last and if you can roll with them then your stress levels will be manageable. I always used to say that I was pissed off about the last problem but only until the next one pops up :)

 

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Just now, Patrick said:

Yes you can- Insulated block and beam - instead of blocks , there is insulation. A LOT.

 

I stand corrected - never seen that detailed before.

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To be honest it doesn't look too bad. 

 

You could always add a thin layer of pumped screed if you want a perfectly smooth floor but a descent tiler will solve most of your woes. 

 

With this in mind it might be worth raising your ground floor ceiling height and windows by maybe 25mm. 

 

BTW I hope the poor guy with the stroke will be ok. That kind of thing makes all our building issues seem minor. 

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We had a few problems but nothing as serious as poor guy with the stroke.

Our raft looked smooth and level but we still ended up using a self levelling resin screed to make the surface suitable for a karndean floor. We did the screeding ourselves, it's not perfect but it's a self build. The stuff we used was the Mapei ultraplan, mixed up a bag at a time with and electric stirrer. It goes off very quickly so you need to have everything ready before you start. 

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I like Mapei stuff, had a small area to do this weekend just to level up about a sq metre of old wall, stone, concrete and thought I would try Srewfix no nonsense self levelling …

Carefully tamped it level with a float and when I came back .. arrrfggghhhhh!  it had haunched up into a ridge across the middle … much scraping later it sorted it, luckily wasn’t fully cured!

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