In order for the finishing coat on your warm water floor to lie perfectly flat and not to be quickly worn out on potholes and hillocks - you need to be especially careful in forming the screed.
Required tools for screed
Before producing the screed for a warm water floor, stock up on the necessary material and tools. For work, you need a padded cord, wire for fixing the beacon profiles, a sharp knife, an electric punch and a screwdriver, nippers, a grater and a trowel, a mixing tank and a conventional shovel.
Screed materials are cement and sand. For one 50-kilogram bag of cement, you need 1.5 buckets of water and 200 kilograms of sand. In order for the screed to have some elasticity - we recommend you add a plasticizer to the mixture - it's about 150 grams of usual liquid soap. Beacons use metal profiles 20 to 40.
The most effective for a warm water floor is the so-called floating screed, which is located on the thermal insulation layer. As a layer of thermal insulation, polystyrene boards are usually used.
Getting Started: Displaying the Horizon
Draw a horizontal line along the perimeter of the room at a height of about a meter and a half. Use the building or laser level.
Hang the distance from the given line to the floor, thus determining the highest and lowest point of the floor of the room.
After this, calculate the required amount of screed materials. In the highest place of the floor to its level should be added not less than 4 centimeters. Draw a line indicating the upper level of your future screed.
Screed: prepare the base
Clean the base of the room. Then place on its surface waterproofing: a film or special solution. Next layer put the polystyrene plates as a layer of thermal insulation. At the top, place the reinforcing mesh. Then, according to the chosen scheme, place the water heating pipes.
Install the beacons for leveling the floor
On the opposite walls of the room on the previously marked level line of the top of the screed fix the dowels. We pull a strong cord between them.
. As a lighthouse, we will have a metal profile. It should be installed on wooden wedges so that its upper level matches the tensioned cord.
Lighthouses should be located 0.5 meters from the walls and at a distance less than the rule used for leveling the screed.
The exposed beacons must be firmly fixed on the floor surface. To do this, close to the profiles, we drill to the overlapping of the self-tapping screws.
Note that the profile must not sag between the fasteners. If necessary, add additional supports.
Using a binding wire, we fasten the beacons to the screws, achieving a rigid fixation of the beacons.
wire. At the perimeter of our room we lay a special damping tape, which should prevent thermal deformation of the screed.
Mix the mortar for the floor screed
Stir the solution as described above. Liquid soap is added carefully - its excess can lead to a slowing down of setting.
The mixed solution in the tank is moved to the floor and placed between two selected guide beacons, usually starting from the far corner of the room.
The stored weight of the solution should resemble a thick sour cream and slightly gently overtake, but do not spread over the surface.
Align the laid mass with a conventional shovel.
With the rule from the far wall for yourself, we move the excess of the solution and level the surface of the screed.
rule Removing voids
To prevent air cavities from forming in the solution mass, the reinforcing mesh must be pulled before leveling the screed surface. The solution should cover the water heating pipes of the floor from all sides.
mesh must always be twisted. Screed: level the floor after curing
After you have laid the screed over the entire surface of the room, wait at least 2 weeks. During this entire period the screed must be regularly moistened with water.
After hardening, take the scraper and remove the top layer of the screed so that the surface of the beacons appears.
In the next step, remove metallic beacons from the screed. Cut the layer of the screed with a spatula( carefully, so as not to damage the heating pipes), gently knock on the lighthouses with a hammer and then remove them.
The formed grooves should be moistened with water and leveled with a solution similar to those used for screed formation.
With the help of the rule, we scrape off the excess of the solidified solution placed in the grooves.
After removing excess we pass through the surface of the coupler with a float.
At the final stage, with a knife, cut off the excess of the damping ribbon projecting above the screed surface.