Relaying a Karndean floor on top of old one

[neilaberdeen]

I have been on the Karndean course and fitted several floors but this one has me stumped as to what to do. I am looking to lay a new Karndean floor on top of an existing karndean tiled floor with same size tiles. What I am looking to find out is how do I go about this? Should I actually lift the entire floor, the tiles and plywood (I laid the original ply with proper staples etc so I know it is correct and safe) and just start again or is it possible to just lay them on top of the existing floor. I dont want to take the lazy option but the room lends itself to laying them on top if this is possible. If I do do that is it a case of having to put a skim coat over the exisitng tiles and them the gluing and tiles on top. Or is it possible to pull up all the tiles at least, then skim coat the floor to even out imperfections on the ply and then lay the tiles. Does skim coating on top of the glue before laying the tiles cause any problems. I also thought of lifting the tiles and if the come up ok maybe just gluing the other tiles with glue on top of glue. I hope that makes sense, I know it will to trained fitters and the experts out there. Any help much appreciated

 

[flooringman]

You need to remove the existing tiles and any residual adhesive before laying the new tiles.

They should come up alright with a good scraper and not damage the ply if you are careful. You can go over the ply again with feather finish ( I presume you did this on the original job ) if there are any slight imperfections.

 

[neilaberdeen]

Thanks for that. I think they will come up ok and maybe only take off little bits of ply. I was planning to put quite a thick coat of skim on top of the glue and then re glue the tiles on. What was worrying me was having to remove the ply which was put on with divergent staples. I havent removed that before but would imagine that its a nightmare to take the ply up. Has anyone tried that and know what the best way to get ply up is. I have heard that I should just ram a spade under it and peel it off but I imagine it would come up in tiny pieces seeing as I stapled it every 150 mm or so.

 

[Petest67]

Instead of a thick coat of feather edge, use stopgap700. As the saying goes, its the mutts nuts

 

[neilaberdeen]

When I was on the course we did lay some stopgap however it seemed a lot more work then just skimming with a thin coat of feather coat. I dont know enough about the pros of stop gap to be honest though. Just seemed a lot of work with pouring and rolling it etc. Thanks very much for your feedback tho always keen to hear as much as I can