Floor levelling compound.

[Packstrapper]

I have just had a conservatory built and the builder has said it would be cheaper as i am tiling it to use thick bed adhesive .I bought 4 bags at £25 each and two bags have not even build up a third of the area.It is 3.2mX2.2m and i need to build up the area 25mm before i start to tile .Would it be better to build up the 25mm with levelling compound or is this too much ?.Also is it easy to use as i have not levelled a floor before.

Thanks in advance

 

[davecooper]

This was the quandry that I found myself in recently. My floor had a significant dip across one diagonal and I realised that I would need a huge amount of cement to lay tiles as it was.
I decided that I would go half way by taking out the worst of the dip with self leveller and then use adhesive to fill the rest. I thought cost would be the deciding factor here but as the leveller and cement were similar prices, this did not come into it. It was basically a time issue. However, after having finally completed the floor, I wish I had fully levelled the floor first as laying large tiles on 12mm of cement is not that easy and it is very heavy on cement. (I used three 20kg bags of cement for a 9sqm floor. I had never used leveller before and initially made it too thick. When I had got the consistency right (a lot runnier than directed on the bag) it became very easy with the leveller effectively doing all the work. When I came to laying the tiles, the couple of small areas where the floor was actually flat were a joy to do and used very little cement.

 

[Packstrapper]

Thanks Dave, I had the same experience of laying tiles on a thick layer of adhesive and know how painful it can be .I am taking your advice and i have bought some wood roughly the thickness of the shortfall and placed it around the room packing up where neseccary to make level.I am then going to try filling with sand an cement up to the wood placed around the room .hopfully this will give me a better surface to tile on.

Thanks again for your reply.