Floor preparation and screeding in Grantham

This is where floors get ruined, and it's usually because someone was in a hurry.

A new screed has to dry before a floor covering goes on top of it. Not "feel dry to the touch". Dry measured with a moisture meter, to the level the flooring manufacturer requires.

How long that takes depends on the depth of the screed, the type, the temperature, the humidity in the building and how much air is moving. The old rule of thumb about a day per millimetre is a rough guide at best and it falls apart on thicker sections and in cold, still conditions.

The limits are tight, and they're tighter than people expect. Timber and laminate in particular need very dry screeds, and gypsum-based screeds have stricter limits than cement ones. Underfloor heating adds another step, because the system has to go through a proper commissioning cycle before the floor goes down.

We test rather than guess. If a floor isn't ready, we'll tell you it isn't ready, and we'd rather have that conversation than lay a floor we know is going to fail.

Every floor covering takes the shape of what's underneath it.

Lay thin LVT over a floor with a ridge in it and the ridge shows through, permanently. Lay sheet vinyl over gappy floorboards and every gap telegraphs up. Lay a floating floor over a dip and it flexes there until the joints work loose. Lay anything at all over a damp screed and the moisture has nowhere to go but up, into the adhesive and the covering.

None of that is fixable afterwards. The floor has to come up.

So when we measure, we look at what's under the old floor as well as at the room. If it needs work, we tell you, we price it separately so you can see exactly what it is, and you decide.