I am in the process of buying a 50/60-ies built no-fines concrete ex-council house and I was told by the survey that the ground floor has a so-called magnesite subfloor. After a quick search I found that it is a problematic subfloor due to being prone to dampness as well as potentially containing asbestos. I paid an asbestos survey to check for asbestos and it came out negative but I am not sure to what extend I can trust it to be honest. I also found out that flooring fitters refuse to work on such floors (I was not told why exactly, just that they dont work on such floors and they cannot take me as a customer) but I suspect because they are afraid of asbestos or because of potentiall installation complications later. I am sadly tempted to cancel the house purchase even though I have paid a lot for various house surveys already, as I get to continuously face new surprises about the house's special construction materials and subsequent complications because of that. Any suggestions please? Is magnesite underfloor as problematic as I think it is or there are easy solutions to that that I just happened to not be aware of yet? Thank you!
Needs ripping up, no if buts or maybes and fully prepping afterwards which will all depend on what you find underneath. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Thank for your reply. I suspect that ripping it up, provided it is fully guaranteed to not contain asbestos might be a possibility. Any suggestions on how much it could cost and who are the specialists for doing such a task? The ground floor is roughly 40 sq.m.
You won't get anything to stick to it. They arent prone to damp particularly but are conductive so will always give a strong moisture reading when tested with tramex etc...
Following up from my original post, I am personally not 100% convinced that the underfloor material is indeed magnesite or potentially something else. The building survey mentioned that it is magnesite based on looks and experienced but there were no measurements taken whatsoever after I asked them about this. Now firstly, the underfloor is completely black in colour, whereas when I Google for "magnesite", the material appears to be mostly pink in colour. Secondly, I used a conductive moisture meter on it, as I read that magnesite is itself conductive and gives high moisture readings, but to my surprise the readings I was getting were completely ZERO and I tried measuring several times. As a side note, the asbestos survey report came back negative as well. Any ideas from anyone please? Thanks.
Thank you for your reply. Now to be honest I am personally not 100% convinced that the material is indeed magnesite or maybe something else (I have posted a follow up). Other than this I have received a couple of reasonable quotes already for ripping of the (potentially?) magnesite layer and laying over new screed in the range of 3-6k. That, provided that there will be no further surprises (e.g. the underlying concrete slabs are destroyed or anything similar).
Some of the houses in Bagshot where I use to work had those black subfloors. It’s rock hard and some sort of dpm. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
You can fit carpet over it or floated laminate and engineered wood. Not sure about a bonded hardfloor Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
