What is the most important thing for the long-term use of the floor?--The base of the ground.

What is the most important thing for the long-term use of the floor?--The base level of the ground

The influence of the flatness of base-level ground and its treatment.

Nowadays the surface of the ground is usually made of cement mortar material, with a small part of concrete. Before the floor shop is installed, we need detect  the flatness of surface ground.

The requirements for the flatness of the surface ground are as follows:

1) Keel type pavement: use 2 meters ruler to detect the base level of ground, and the maximum chord height between ruler and base level of ground should be less than or equal to 5 mm;The height variance of finished surface of floor paving is less than or equal to 3 mm per 2 m;

2) Suspension pavement: measure the base level of ground with a ruler of 2 meters, and the maximum chord height between the ruler and the base ground should be less than or equal to 3mm;

3) Sole viscose pavement: use 2 meters ruler to detect the surface level of ground, the flatness variance should not be more than 3 mm per 2 meters; For sheet cork floor, flatness variance should not be more than 1.5 mm per 2m;

The reason why there is such technical requirement on flatness of surface of floor is because if the surface ground is not flat, many problem will be caused.

1) keel method installation: It can cause keel excessive bending when using, and produce excessive stress to wooden floor, the keel and the floor above it will be broken after a long time use so sound will arise when walking on the floor;

2) suspension installation: it will cause damage to the lock of the wood floor, and also cause noise when walking on the floor;

3) bottom viscose installation: the floor can't closely pasted with the ground at the surface level, so that the control force will be uneven when the floor is on expansion and contraction and eventually it will cause gap between the floor while the gap will not exist on the flat ground, and sometimes noise will also arise when walking on the floor.

So, how to deal with the floor that can not meet the requirement?

For cement mortar or concrete surface floor, we usually use self-leveling. Cement base self-leveling is a kind of mixture composed of cement, glue and various additives, which can be used to deal with the flatness of the base floor before the floor is laid.

When the mixture of cement based self leveling is in use, a certain amount of water need to be blended evenly in a large enough container before use. Some questions arise:

1) Is the cement-based self-leveling mixture waterproof ?

Answer is negative, cement base self-leveling mixture is not moistureproof, before floor is installed, measuring device still need to be used in cement base self-leveling to test the moisture rate, only when the moisture content of basic level ground meet the technical requirement of the floor, we can start to lay the floor.

2)What is the thickness of the cement-based self-leveling mixture should be?

That depends on the manufacturer's technical request. However, if it is done twice, the second cement base self-leveling mixture can only be made after the surface of the first cement base self-leveling is polished and cleaned.

3) Can cement self-leveling directly be finished on cement mortar or concrete base ground?

Of course not! First of all, we need to check whether there is rubber, paint, oil, wax and other pollutants at the grass-roots level ground , if so, we need to grind it out by using the cement mortar or concrete grinding machine , the pollutants on the base floor can cause land uplift and protrusion, which can cause floor installation to fail. 

Secondly, it is necessary to check whether there are serious building cracks, pits and protrusions on the base floor. The cracks in the building must be repaired, otherwise it will lead to large cracks and empty drums in the self-leveling layer of cement foundation, which will lead to the failure of floor pavement and extremely serious cracks in assembly.

For potholes, it is necessary to use quick-drying cement to fill them flat and dry them before the next construction.For the raised area, it needs to be ground out.In this way, the uneven drying of cement self-leveling layer can be avoided and the construction thickness of cement self-leveling layer can be reduced.

Use the roller to evenly apply the proportioned interfacial agent on the cement mortar or concrete base ground.The function of interfacial agent is to make the smoothness of the whole base floor surface uniform, and to ensure that the tension between the self-leveling cement mortar and the base floor is uniform when it is dry, so that the occurrence of dry shrinkage cracks can be avoided;

Seal the capillary in cement mortar or concrete to prevent water from flowing into cement mortar or concrete through gap in the construction of cement base self-leveling mixture, thus causing problems in the leveling property of cement base self-leveling, and eventually resulting in the failure of the construction of the flatness of the base ground;

4) Cement self-leveling first or moistureproof or Moisture-proof measures first?

The moistureproof layer must be made first and 0.3-0.8 mm diameter quartz sand should be scattered and when the moistureproof layer is not entirely dried , and the self leveling can be made after the extra sand is cleared.The purpose of scattering quartz sand is to increase the bonding area between the self-leveling cement base and the moisture-proof layer, so as to increase the bonding force between the two. At present, a serious problem in the decoration industry is that the treatment of the flatness of the base floor is constructed by the workers of the decoration company, and they seldom test the moisture content of the base floor. Few workers know the importance of the moisture rate of the base floor and take measures to deal with the ground that can not meet the requirement.

We can see above，the flatness of base-level ground will have serious influence on the installation of the floor,including the damage of floor itself, the gap of installation and the strange noise.

And when deal with the unflatness of base-level ground, if construction sequence, craft exists a problem, it will bring more bigger effect to the floor, making the installation be a failure. To install the floor in a professional, perfect way on the ground floor, floor industry and decoration industry need to cooperate and develop professional construction standards and acceptance criteria.