Uneven Kitchen Floor

[rmillener]

Hi All,

 

We have knocked an internal wall down to create a single kitchen / diner from two original rooms. Now the rooms are plastered and we are ready to start the kitchen installation it is clear that the original concrete floors are anything but level! There are two main issues:

 

1) Where the removed wall used to sit, the concrete floor has been screeded up to the old wall, and now it is removed it has left quite an obvious ridge on both sides.

2) There are a number of quite big "dips" in the main part of the floors where the level can be as much as 30-50mm below a baseline zero. There are also substantial high points at the edge of all the walls, for the same reason as in Point 1.

 

I have tried to get hold of a few flooring contractors to come out and have a look, but I am struggling to find interested parties and I am getting towards thinking about sorting this myself for speed and simplicity. I am sure the floor is definitely not OK to leave as it is as it will be very obvious when the Karndean (or similar) is laid that it will be all over the place, plus it would really annoy me!

 

I know self levelling epoxy exists for floors that are out of level up to extreme measures, but when you start pricing it up to fill a 50mm dip it starts getting expensive! 

 

Are there any rougher and cheaper initial treatments to put down before getting a professional in to put a final thin layer of self levelling epoxy to give a properly flat finish for the flooring installation itself? I am thinking like some kind of rougher concrete screeding which just gives me a good base to work from. I feel the initial job is hopefully something I can achieve but just want to know which product is recommended. 

 

Finally, it is likely it would be a few weeks / months before we fit the actual flooring so the temporary finish needs to allow for normal everyday foot traffic on it once set, and with some areas only needing a very small skim I would be concerned it might just break off? 

 

Thoughts and advice welcome!

 

A couple of pictures are attached. The yellow highlighting shows the worst areas for the ridging up against the old walls (also the same where the new sliders have been installed instead of the wall. The red circles show the particularly bad dips in the floor.

 

Thanks

Rich 

[markc]

Really low spots can be filled with concrete, use sharp sand and pea gravel, or just sand/cement screed. How accurate you need to be depends on the finish going down, if it’s tiles I once did a floor where the concrete was like a ploughed field, cost extra in adhesive but not a problem … just have to just long levels or rails to get the tiles level