Kitchen is half concrete/wood - Can I use Self Level?

[systematic]

Hello guys,

Firstly, Merry Xmas! Hope you had a gooden.

As the title implies, we have ripped out the vinyl in the Kitchen to reveal a half concrete, half wooden floor (wooden floorboards). There is a dip/drop/rise where they both meet (approx. 0.5cm).

We were thinking of tiling and have been advised to level the floor.

A builder mentioned that I could get a thin sheet of plywood and nail it to the floorboards, which would eliminate the 0.5cm gap. After that we could use self level.

After Googling, I have learned that wood floors constantly expand and contract, the self leveling concrete would detach and shale within days. Tje next thing I researched was backer board but apparently even backer board will not hold the self leveling stuff, for it will be too thin.

So my question is, how do I level the floor?

If you'd like pictures of the floor, please let me know.

Thank you and Merry Xmas again! [/b]

 

[pmx_super]

I had the same situation with floor substrates. My tiler braced the floor joists, replaced the floorboards with ply, then poured leveling compound over the whole lot. It's been down for a couple of months and seems to be holding up ok, though I do find the hollow echo when I walk on the old wooden side a bit disconcerting.

 

[tictic]

ok you have to differant substrates,so you will have to treat them differantely...as you have said..movement this is the key thing to a certain tile failure...

timber....
lift your floorboards check joist spans etc...
then seal underside and edges of wbp ply with sbr, (22mm/25mm and lay to same level as concrtete,leave a 5-10mm gap between them.

conctrete floor sweep/clean and apply a sbr or acrylic primer to this...(helps adhesion of addy and stops dust from interfereing with addy also)

tile fixing
you will NEED a exspansion/movement joint placed between the subtrates and follow up through your tiles..some come in colours to match your grout..

movement joints from...
shutler
gradus
genesis

dont forget a quality flexiable cement based adhesive/grout...

what type of tiles/size are you fixing?

 

[Richard C]

Had a feeling I’d seen this one before, it’s a double post ;
//www.diynot.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=255615&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=15
Didn’t get involved with systematic at the time (christ it was Boxing day after all) & don’t know how it turned out for him but I totally agree with tictic; if you don’t decouple/isolate the 2 substrates, you will have future problems with the tiles.