Any flooring experts on here?

[excossack]

Having removed the carpet and underfelt on the ground floor so i can fit some laminate flooring i discovered we have what looks like a black bitchumen type floor of about 10mm thick, near to where the main water feed comes in some of the flooring has broken away and i can see a little bit of cloth (maybe DP of some kind)under this is some concrete i think.
How do i go about repairing this? Would the concrete under the black flooring be acting as a DPC?
Other sections have broken up but still intact.
Any suggestions?

 

[Iain Westland]

tis bitumen screed by the sounds, the staple of north west builds since man created the brick

you will still need a dpc between the bitch and the underlay

iain

 

[excossack]

So do i remove some of the surrounding bitch get some DPC and lay it over the top and the put some bitch over the top and level it with the existing bitch?

 

[Iain Westland]

personally, i would just fill it and lay over the top, but im not an expert .... then again I cant see many tradesmen doing out different when your out of the room

 

[excossack]

Cheers. Right Bitch hunting tomorrow then.

 

[pidgeon chit welder]

Make sure that the floor that the laminate is going on is 100% dry for the slightest moisture evaporation from the floor slab will permeate through the laminate and cause it to turn up at the edge of each board so it ends up looking like a British rail sandwich . Insurers do not cover laminate floors as we found out because they are so prone to damage by moisture , half the bungalow was laminate floored , we had a hidden central heating system leak and the floors were wrecked..

We have screeded the whole kitchen floor whilst the room was totally empty of cabinets using a rubberized leveler . Once it was dry 4 days or so we laid a carbonized bamboo floor by gluing down each plank .. this does have a great resistance to moisture damage and it has added £'s to the value of the property,.

 

[Archie]

Cheers. Right Bitch hunting tomorrow then.

Is that even legal?

 

[Iain Westland]

Evening entertainment in Bolton

 

[pidgeon chit welder]

John ,
That black area .. reminds me of what was done some 40 odd years ago when a floor slab was broken through to replace incoming water , electric cables or gas pipes ( lived in Lincolnshire and Barkshire ) .

Most times there was no WPM ( water proof membrane ) but to try and remake the integrity of places where a WPM was compromised companies like British Gas used hot ashphalt for a quick job and to try and remake the WPM moisture resistant so inthe end for a few years utility companies used ashphalt as a standard repair topping in nearly all their jobs that involved breaking throught the floor slab.

The excavated floor may have been topped out with black asphalt .

Check the rest of your floor to see if it is reasonably dry by putting down a couple of square feet of heavy duty plastic ,lay some ply over it or cover it in sand , 24 hrs later lift it and see if it has sweated ...you'll have condensate on the underside .
If condensate is evident you will have to take some further action unless you are doing it to " flip " the property.