Bitumen Dpm, parquet flooring & what flooring to get !

[tobycgraham]

Hello,

I'm after a bit of advice regarding potential flooring in my home and any help would be greatly appreciated. My house is a 60's/70's build. Its had an air blower system, this one in the floor:

Untitled

• tobycgraham
• 23 Mar 2015
• 1

Untitled

• tobycgraham
• 23 Mar 2015
• 1

The bitumen layer is only a few mm thick. Is this likely to be my DPM ?
I've had a tradesman visit to give me a quote on luxury vinyl tiles. I can't remember all of what he said, but basically he told me that I'd need to remove the parquet, then apply a compound to the bitumen then go from there - it sounded like a long and rigorous process !

Are there any other flooring products I could buy that wouldn't require as much prep ?

 

[Deleted member 174758]

I've had a tradesman visit to give me a quote on luxury vinyl tiles. I can't remember all of what he said, but basically he told me that I'd need to remove the parquet, then apply a compound to the bitumen then go from there - it sounded like a long and rigorous process !

Your floorer is absolutely right. I work mainly on commercial stuff these days (pubs, restaurants, shops, etc) and that's exactly how we do it. Once the parquet is up it's a really quick job to lay down a green waterproofer then use latex as a leveller. As far as I'm aware laying vinyl directly onto a solid wood floor reduces how much the floor can breath and may cause it to blow off the subfloor because being solid wood it continues to move. You can cover the parquet with plywood, then latex that because plywood is dimensionally stable, but there's always the possibility that the screws securing the plywood onto the parquet blocks may actually cause blocks to loosen. That's why the advice is normally to lift the parquet first

Any other product? Underlay and carpet? It doesn't matter as much what's going on beneath them. Or possibly a floating laminate laid on top of plywood over the parquet

 

[tobycgraham]

I've had a tradesman visit to give me a quote on luxury vinyl tiles. I can't remember all of what he said, but basically he told me that I'd need to remove the parquet, then apply a compound to the bitumen then go from there - it sounded like a long and rigorous process !

Your floorer is absolutely right. I work mainly on commercial stuff these days (pubs, restaurants, shops, etc) and that's exactly how we do it. Once the parquet is up it's a really quick job to lay down a green waterproofer then use latex as a leveller. As far as I'm aware laying vinyl directly onto a solid wood floor reduces how much the floor can breath and may cause it to blow off the subfloor because being solid wood it continues to move. You can cover the parquet with plywood, then latex that because plywood is dimensionally stable, but there's always the possibility that the screws securing the plywood onto the parquet blocks may actually cause blocks to loosen. That's why the advice is normally to lift the parquet first

Any other product? Underlay and carpet? It doesn't matter as much what's going on beneath them. Or possibly a floating laminate laid on top of plywood over the parquet

Thanks jobandknock - always useful to get confirmation.