Identifying dramas with floating floor installation

Hi all. Long time listener, first time caller.

I am wanting to install a wooden floating floor over cement slab in my apartment, and am trying to identify & have a solution for all the associated problems. Risk management in action!

First off - I'm wanting to remove & re-use (if possible) the wooden skirting boards already in place. The issue here is that I have rendered walls & am concerned about damaging either the render or the skirtings or both in the removal &/or refixing process. Any tips?

Secondly, I know the floor is uneven, and I am happy to use a self-levelling compound to fix this. I am faced with a cork type material (not sure what it's called) on the slab at the moment & I am uncertain as to whether I can go ahead & level over the top of this or whether it needs to come out?

Lastly (hopefully), how do I best determine whether my room is square?

Oh yeah - I said I was in an apartment didn't I... Lucky enough for me, there's no other apartments underneath, so the regular underlay should cut it I think.

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Originally Posted by Kites

I am wanting to install a wooden floating floor over cement slab in my apartment
First off - I want to remove & re-use (if possible) the wooden skirting boards already in place. The issue here is that I have rendered walls & am concerned about damaging either the render or the skirtings or both in the removal &/or refixing process. Any tips?

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Be prepared for some damage to either or both the skirting and wall. Run something sharp around between the top of the skirting and wall to break the seal.
Alternatively, leave the skirting in place and cover the gap between skirting and floor with quad or some other decorative moulding
http://www.porta.com.au/matrix1.php?cat=Core_Building

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Secondly, I know the floor is uneven, and I am happy to use a self-levelling compound to fix this. I am faced with a cork type material (not sure what it's called) on the slab at the moment & I am uncertain as to whether I can go ahead & level over the top of this or whether it needs to come out?

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Can you sand the cork level? if not I would remove it, then use the self-levelling compound.

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how do I best determine whether my room is square?

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If opposite walls are the same length then measure the diagonals they should be the same length if the room is square.
or
From one corner measure three units along one wall and mark point A
From the same corner measure four units on the adjacent wall and mark point B .
Measure the distance between point A and point B, which should equal 5 units if the corner is square.

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Oh yeah - I said I was in an apartment didn't I... Lucky enough for me, there's no other apartments underneath, so the regular underlay should cut it I think.

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Use the best underlay you can obtain. Cuts the noise down for yourself as well as the neighbours.

i just finished laying clip-lock flooring in my unit which is all concrete.. Most walls were out of square and the floors were not level.. using a 2-3mm underlay the floors came up great.
Dont worry about out of square walls and trying to level the floors may do more harm than good in some cases..

Thanks very much for your helpful advice.

I will give it a shot & let you know how it goes.

Another thing I've only just thought of - What if levelling the floor & installing the floater leaves insufficient clearance for my front door? It's a fire door, so I'm guessing it's not just as simple as planing it down.
:doh:

Hi Kites,

We too just finished laying floating flooring and every one of our rooms was 'out-of-square'.

We had massive uneveness with our concrete slab, tried to self level but it wouldn't work the way everyone was telling us it would and, just as sol381 said, trying to level caused more harm than good.

Our self leveller sat there like a massive pancake. :cool:

Wasn't really 'running' in the direction it should have. Mixed it up exactly to directions - no luck.

Before it 'set', we trowelled it all up again (after creating a few more profanities to add to the english dictionary :ranting2:) before we had a bigger disaster on our hands.

Got a professional in, who then informed us that the concrete slab had never been sealed, therefore the self leveller (which we got from bunnings and was told that it was crap) was not going to 'flow' as it should.

Our installer sealed the spots that was to be levelled and then hit it with the self leveling compound. All went well.

Can't help you with the fire door, sorry. Our doors were all swapped out for nicer ones and our door frames had to be trimmed down.
Good luck ! :2tsup:

That "Corky" stuff you refer to is a product called Magnesite. Awful stuff to adhere to so you're on the right track with a floating floor.

It is very rare that you have to level the whole floor for floating floors unless their in real bad shape. Simply use a straight edge about 1.5 long (you can use a piece of your floor if it's a laminate mdf type) and run around your floor trying to identify any low spots (geater than about 3mm) and fill them in with some leveler (find a generic cheap ardit for this as you don't have to adhere to it anyway and be aware most ardit requires primer, pva based for magnesite) . Alternatively knock off any humps you may find. This method is a lot cheaper than flooding the joint with ardit (which isn't a good idea over magnesite).

Also I wouldn't worry about your front door as even if you were to top the whole floor there's no reason you would need to build it up higher than say 3mm, and it isn't a good idea to have your door clearing the floor by such a small gap anyway as you can pick up a small bit of something and put a nice meaty scratch in the floor.

Floating floors can put up with a bit of "up and downs" and if it's a click together simply start laying and if you get to a point where there seems to be a fair bit of movement than simply take that section apart and identify the problem and fix it (i.e build it up or knock it off)

If you have rendered walls it's a lot easier to install proper skirting than the scotia often sold with the floor) and don't try and attempt undercutting metal door frames just neatly cut around them (about 5mm gap to be safe) and use caulk in colours to finish off.

Just start at one side of your unit along the longest straight wall, don't worry about the squareness as there aint nothing you can do about it if it's not straight. Make sure the tongue is facing you and not the wall on start up, gently and patiently get the first couple of rows together (this is the slow part) and away you go, if it's a glue together system run the bead of glue along the upper edge inside the groove.

Have fun m8 and find a good chiropracter for after:U