subfloor help

Oh my…Please no luan! That will be a hot mess!

Use self leveling compound to raise the concrete 1/4”. Be sure to prime the floor.

Check YouTube. Plenty of good instructional videos.

As a pro I would probably just trowel/ramp off all the doorways then float and skimcoat. When I do this I keep a straight edge close by and pull it across the mud as it hardens to ensure flatness. It's really hard to describe. When I learned the trade self-leveling products were not available. So we HAD to do it with trowels and straight edges.

Now you're going to have pros who ONLY want to self level, guys like me who will trowel out 95% of floor prep and every combination in between based on preferences, conditions and skill level. You will pretty never want to use sheets------plywood or cement board to prep for resilient over concrete. It's always going to be a cementitious mix.

Self leveling would most likely work best for any amateur. Please carefully FOLLOW ALL THE INSTRUCTIONS including conditions like clean, dry, structurally sound, free of paint, grease etc., temperature, mix ratio, mix time, working time. You can do it!

Incognito said:

Now you're going to have pros who ONLY want to self level, guys like me who will trowel out 95% of floor prep

Click to expand...

Oh good, I thought it was just me… Sometimes self leveling is the way to go but the floor has to be in pretty bad shape.

I remember the fist leveling job I ever did. Over 100 bags of expensive leveler plus primer and 3 men for the day… Needed a special mixing drill and large mixing pails, smoothers, leveling rakes, spiked shoes…The building owner wanted what he wanted… Musta been talking to some architects…. I could have done it in a day by myself with 30 bags of less expensive patch, a screed and a trowel…

Also we used to build ramps all the time. Nice smooth gentle inclines to meet different height floors. Worked great.

JPfloor said:

Oh good, I thought it was just me… Sometimes self leveling is the way to go but the floor has to be in pretty bad shape.

I remember the fist leveling job I ever did. Over 100 bags of expensive leveler plus primer and 3 men for the day… Needed a special mixing drill and large mixing pails, smoothers, leveling rakes, spiked shoes…The building owner wanted what he wanted… Musta been talking to some architects…. I could have done it in a day by myself with 30 bags of less expensive patch, a screed and a trowel…

Also we used to build ramps all the time. Nice smooth inclines to meet different height floors. Worked great.

Click to expand...

My first recollection was the Getty Center out here in the early '90s when Feather Finish was brand new but I believe the K15 had been around a while. They wanted that whole place flat.flat.FLAT. We did the lino in art storage floors and sheet vinyl in the research labs. Someone told me that the "change order" for the Ardex work on the carpet areas alone was over $3M. Yeah, for glue-down carpet?

I'd love to know how many thousands of bags they used. I got in arguments with the boss' son out there and suddenly work got real slow. But I was there long enough to see many hundreds of bags by our company and the carpet guys were there for months and months before and after our contract. That was a good job for the union's Pension/Health and Welfare funds. I was glad to get "kicked off" that job. It was an 8AM start in Brentwood------about as bad a commute as you could get from the San Gabriel Valley. Then they made us work 2nd shift to boot. So maybe THAT had something to so with my bad attitude. I was kind of famous for that in those days.

One of our competitors, a union shop, got real big into leveling. Bought a mixing truck at a cost of 1 million I was told. That was in the 90s. Looked like a cement truck but did all the mixing on site. Like gypcrete. Could pump up to three stories they said. After that they got all the really big leveling jobs in our area. At that point they were in the mason’s union as well as floor covering. A friend of mine went from laying carpet to pouring leveler full time in the mason’s union. He did well. They had the computerized mixers for anything above 3 stories… Mixes almost as fast as you can pour the bags in… We got a lot of the smaller 20,000 ft. jobs they didn’t want…

JPfloor said:

One of our competitors, a union shop, got real big into leveling. Bought a mixing truck at a cost of 1 million I was told. That was in the 90s. Looked like a cement truck but did all the mixing on site. Like gypcrete. Could pump up to three stories they said. After that they got all the really big leveling jobs in our area. At that point they were in the mason’s union as well as floor covering. A friend of mine went from laying carpet to pouring leveler full time in the mason’s union. He did well. They had the computerized mixers for anything above 3 stories… Mixes almost as fast as you can pour the bags in… We got a lot of the smaller 20,000 ft. jobs they didn’t want…

Click to expand...

I didn't see a truck. We did buy have the pump that was purchased when our competition went belly-up. I dont think anyone every learned how to use it. Not sure what ever did happen to it. I suspect the shop would have resold to get it out of the way. We always just used the Ardex pails made for the 2-sack mix even when we did 700 bags in one spot. Boy, when you dont really know that game it can be really stupid. We actually had the Ardex reps out there and still.................well it was stupid but it worked.

Long Story