Sliding doors channel in slab foundation?

[Weebles]

Hi, hoping for some thoughts from those that have been there and done that.....

We have 2 sliding doors on our ground floor.  MBC timber frame with insulated slab foundation.  Nothing built yet.

We either need to channel into the slab so the sliding doors sit a bit lower, or we need to have a 40mm floor make up (bit much for grout and tiles?)..  

Has anyone any experience of channelling in the slab to sit the sliding door frames down a bit?

How does the channelling work in practice? (bit of a daft question but when the concrete is poured what keeps it out of that bit?)

Any tips / things to look out for?

Thanks

 

[lizzie]

A bit of timber cut to the requiired size is what I think keeps the concrete out. 

 

Have you got level threshold sliders going in?

Edited May 8, 2018 by lizzie

[jack]

This is what we did with our MBC slab.

 

Foundation window detail.tif

 

Not shown is an EPDM layer on top of the ply.

 

The reason for the reinforced self-levelling layer is that the initial recess is formed pretty roughly with bits of wood or EPS before the concrete is poured. The slider must sit on a perfectly smooth and level surface, and obviously you need to have it sitting at exactly the right height, especially if you have a level threshold. I was told by the window installers that the final layer needed to be ply.

 

It worked well, with one exception: due to a miscommunication with the window installer, we ended up with the wrong grade of plywood. He said "shuttering ply", which he seemed to think was good quality voidless stuff with a smooth faced (melamine?) veneer. Shuttering ply is actually the cheapest, crappiest, voidiest ply you can buy. In our case, the centre of our 5m door has sunk by a few mm as the ply has settled, meaning that the door sticks about a third of the way open if you raise it to its full height (it's a lift slider). It opens fine if you only lift if halfway.

 

If I were doing this again, I'd go for marine or other high-quality hardwood ply, or possibly even just spend some time getting the reinforced (it must be reinforced!) self-levelling compound to the right level and put the door straight onto an epdm layer on top of that.

[Pete]

9 hours ago, Weebles said:

Hi, hoping for some thoughts from those that have been there and done that.....

We have 2 sliding doors on our ground floor.  MBC timber frame with insulated slab foundation.  Nothing built yet.

We either need to channel into the slab so the sliding doors sit a bit lower, or we need to have a 40mm floor make up (bit much for grout and tiles?)..  

Has anyone any experience of channelling in the slab to sit the sliding door frames down a bit?

How does the channelling work in practice? (bit of a daft question but when the concrete is poured what keeps it out of that bit?)

Any tips / things to look out for?

Thanks

 

We have Internorm sliding doors and they have a 45mm section at the bottom. 20mm of this is below the concrete floor leaving around 25mm for adhesive and tile giving a level threshold. We just laid some timber in whilst we poured the concrete and then removed this which gave us the edge from which to align the doors to.

[Weebles]

18 hours ago, lizzie said:

A bit of timber cut to the requiired size is what I think keeps the concrete out. 

 

Have you got level threshold sliders going in?

@lizzieLow threshold ones - I think they will be level by the time we sort out the floor and outside finishes.  That's what we are aiming for.  Will double check again with the window guys.

 

11 hours ago, jack said:

This is what we did with our MBC slab.

 

Foundation window detail.tif

 

Not shown is an EPDM layer on top of the ply.

 

The reason for the reinforced self-levelling layer is that the initial recess is formed pretty roughly with bits of wood or EPS before the concrete is poured. The slider must sit on a perfectly smooth and level surface, and obviously you need to have it sitting at exactly the right height, especially if you have a level threshold. I was told by the window installers that the final layer needed to be ply.

 

It worked well, with one exception: due to a miscommunication with the window installer, we ended up with the wrong grade of plywood. He said "shuttering ply", which he seemed to think was good quality voidless stuff with a smooth faced (melamine?) veneer. Shuttering ply is actually the cheapest, crappiest, voidiest ply you can buy. In our case, the centre of our 5m door has sunk by a few mm as the ply has settled, meaning that the door sticks about a third of the way open if you raise it to its full height (it's a lift slider). It opens fine if you only lift if halfway.

 

If I were doing this again, I'd go for marine or other high-quality hardwood ply, or possibly even just spend some time getting the reinforced (it must be reinforced!) self-levelling compound to the right level and put the door straight onto an epdm layer on top of that.

 

@jackThanks for the tips on the ply.  Not sure what we will need to put in the void but it seems essential to make it level so that is useful to know.

 

11 hours ago, Pete said:

We have Internorm sliding doors and they have a 45mm section at the bottom. 20mm of this is below the concrete floor leaving around 25mm for adhesive and tile giving a level threshold. We just laid some timber in whilst we poured the concrete and then removed this which gave us the edge from which to align the doors to.

 

@Pete Did you just put the window straight onto the concrete (i.e. not use ply / EDPM like Jack did?).  We are looking at a 22mm (ish) finish for the wood flooring so it looks like we need to sink the door frame about 15mm into the slab.  Maybe a deeper slot to ensure it is smooth.

 

Thanks - gives us more to think about to try to get this right before we start.  I'm sure there will be plenty of other things we miss but this might be something that works well.....