[Closed] Diytrackworld - self leveling compound

You can do but for the extra work involved you may as well do the whole floor and it will make levelling the units easier too.

Did this in the utility and just wedged some waste wood up against the unit feet. If anything changes it will involve demolishing the utility, so saved a bunch of extra mixing to fill space I would never see.

My bad; didn't explain the the units are in place, I'm changing the floor in an existing kitchen.

Waste wood sounds good, do i need to seal the bottom edges with anything to stop the compound, not sure how viscous it is?

Self leveling compound doesn't really do what it says IME. You will need to spread / level it with a float, so unless you're trying to maintain more than (say) a 5mm change in level at the edge, it'll just stop where you put it.

The latex stuff is worth the extra money (IMHO).

Work quickly!

While working on a mate's place, we (accidentally) found that over-diluting it (ie: mixing with more water than recommended) really improved the self-leveling effect. It took longer to dry.... but the finish was excellent!

Get some thin battens, like door jamb or roofing battens. Screw up legs supporting kitchen units. Put batten underneath then screw them back down tight. If there are still gaps underneath, run a bead of expanding foam and wait for that to cure.

Check how much clearance you have to screw legs up before choosing batten depth. Sometimes, if the kitchen was fitted "low", there might not be enough room to get the legs up. In which case, a good high bead of expanding foam all around the perimeter might do the job

Also think about the kitchen plinth. If you 'raise' the floor you will need to trim the plinth - guess you were thinking about that anyway if you are laying laminate.

My observations:

100% what Tillydog said - you will need to work it a bit to spread and get an even coverage. It can go off pretty quick so you don't get a lot of time to do this - watering down a bit definitely improves the flow and makes this easier, slightly increased dry time.

You'll need to work fast if covering a reasonable size area - helps to have a [s]bitch[/s] assistant to mix / prep batches of compound as you level and pour!

Battens will be good to edge, seal using anything you have lying around in a mastic gun if it's particularly uneven.

How deep are you filling? Might be better to build up if it's a big / deep area.

Good luck!

Glue 20mm battens to the floor with builders adhesive

I use gun grade expanding foam to form a dam around where I don't want it to go. Wait for it to go off, Bob's your mothers brother.

Self levelling is the wrong description as I've never found one that does. Smoothing compound is the better description.

Don't over dilute it as you'll weaken the mix and never, ever buy the cheap stuff, you want a latex based variant, better still bag and bottle that you mix together.

better still bag and bottle that you mix together.

This!

They'll have drying accelerators which mean it'll be dry enough to floor over by next day. You can get away with not emptying the last few handfuls of the bag in just to keep it a tad runnier. Buy a mixing paddle to attach to a plug-in drill and ensure it's well mixed before pouring. You really need to be quick and have as long a trowel as you can get.

Or get a guy who knows what he's doing to do it. Would save a lot of headaches - it's a bugger to put right once it's cured. It's not exactly "self-levelling". I've done it a fair few times and I still bloody hate it.

Bob's your mothers brother

Surely Bob is your builder...?

Maybe, but I wouldn't want a builder levelling a floor, a flooring fitter is who needs to be doing a levelling screed.

Even our vinyl lads go back in with the power scourer after laying.

We're the tiles really that bad ? 😆

I did a similar job in our utility room last year, removing the tiles and adhesive was a really crappy hard job. (The tiles were hateful things that were rough, dirty looking and brown. They had to go!)

I was insulating and tiling over it, so getting a totally smooth finish wasn't critical, which was a good job at the self leveller didn't self level very well. What I learned afterwards is that the stuff sets really hard... extremely careful use of the angle grinder was the only effective way I found of removing the few bits that needed flattening. The sander with really coarse sheets did absolutely nothing!

Thanks for all the advice; I'm still removing the tiles with a trusty SDS drill and tile chisel.

First half all came up easy as pie, but left their tile adhesive behind. I've had a little tickle at this will the drill and it appears to come off fairly cleanly.

Second half seem to be stuck down with some kind of superhero strength tile adhesive, and are coming off in small (very small) chunks, which is time consuming, but the bonus is they bring the adhesive cleanly off with them.

Not entirely sure, but it looks like they were laid on a layer of self leveling compound, that appears to be pretty much in tact, but we'll see when I've finished.

Do, it's done.

Went for the separate bottle of latex / bag of compound option, and it was a bit of a pain to get smooth, but it leveled up the for a treat. Used expanding foam as a bund around units.

Laminate / underlay is now down and looks ace.

Thanks for all the tips & advice.