Hi, Just joined and would like to ask for some advice please. We've bought a 20 year old house which has a springy floating floor downstairs. The hallway and kitchen are particularly springy which I think might be the result of the chipboard having been wet at some point. We had the same in our old house where we stripped out the chipboard which sat on 50mm baton and had a chap screed the whole lot. The solid screed improved the feel of the floor considerably. I thought the same would be possible in the new place but on drilling a test hole I found the construction slightly different. For the age of property I was expecting maybe 75-100mm celotex and chipboard over the block and beam. It's actually 50mm of low density white polystyrene, a vapor membrane and 18mm chipboard. I made a quick call to the local building control and they advised I would only be able to replace the floor with something of at least equal thermal efficiency. Given the depth available I can't see how insulation and concrete screed would be possible. I'm hoping someone might be able to offer some advice on my options for replacement to achieve roughly equal finished height. With only around 70mm available what options are there for replacing a floating floor with a thermally efficient solid substructure? Is a screed the only solid option or is there something better? Any advice would be very much appreciated. Andy.
What about wet ufh and a gypsum screed? Not sure how thick the insulation is but you can get gypsum screeds and fibre reinforcement dry mix screeds that can be put down pretty thin now. 40-50mm Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
You could try Fermacell (little granules like cat litter) with their solid panel on top (can't remember if the panel is conc based or gypsum based). Got to watch the granules though, they don't like getting wet Sent from my LG-H850 using Tapatalk
