Small concrete floor block/screed abutting woodwork

[bedthief]

Hi thanks in advance for any responses.

I have just bought a house & at the base of the stairs someone has laid some tiles which have been set on top of just some general sand and dirt and some hardcore beneath it.

There is also a fire on the other side of the room which had again some really bad tiles and underneath that actually had about 1" of concrete screed which had cracked and was now very uneven. underneath this again just dirt and hardcore.

Both areas were right up to the edge of the suspended wood floor, and the property has a damp course. I want to relay tiles in these areas and hopefully do a better job of it.

What should be the correct thing to do here? I am guessing it needs a more significant block of concrete on top of hardcore perhaps a couple of inches thick at least? Would there be a need to put some kind of membrane in there to prevent damp penetrating to the surrounding woodwork.

Just to point out that in both areas the edge of the woodwork has been affected by woodworm and rot whereas the rest of the room is fine.

I was thinking I would probably need to box in the area with mdf or something and lay a larger deeper concrete block perhaps with a membrane around the edges?

Untitled

• bedthief
• 15 Apr 2013
• 1

Untitled

• bedthief
• 15 Apr 2013
• 1

Untitled

• bedthief
• 15 Apr 2013
• 1

 

[pinenot]

Re the fireplace; That looks like the timber floor boards are sitting on a dwarf masonry wall? can you tell if the solum is vented under the boards and that only the hearth area is dirt filled??

Re the door - stair plat; is that timber flooring vented under? and the plat dirt filled as per the hearth area??...pinenot

 

[bedthief]

Hi Pinenot.

Apologies for the delayed response I hadn't had opportunity to go back and look again for a while. It's the floor joist you can see and it looks like someone made a lip of concrete over the earth hearth edge just under the boards, before pooring the old screed I removed which was cracked. So I think that lip sitting right against the woodwork would explain the localised rot in that area.

Further down below the joist seems to be sat on some masonry which appears to be original however the earth in the centre of the hearth seems to go below the level of the brick work. The rest of the floor is suspended and in filled.

The platform by the door is just earth filled and doesn't even have a screed or anything underneath, could that indicate that those tiles are the originals and that the concrete lip (which again seems to have been done badly by someone who decided to write his name in it) is again why the floor boards meeting them have rotted?

Thanks

 

[pinenot]

It's never a good idea to place wood in direct contact with concrete, without a dpc between them, wood absorbs moisture holding on to it and eventually rotting.
I'm not quite understanding the lip of concrete bit, but anyhow could you sketch the situation out?