uneven kitchen floor

[richard633]

Hi -
I am currently sorting out our tired old kitchen floor and have removed the units, the old laminate floor, plywood under-layer and some floorboards to sort out the plumbing/electrics.

The old floorboards are about 150 wide and have bowed up a bit along the centres as they normally do - ie the joints are low areas. To make things worse there is a layer of 1950's vinyl tiles which has only partially been removed and this layer has mostly gone only at the joints where a few floorboards have been lifted makinhg low spots about 5mm deep in line with the boards. The old tiles would be very difficult to remove completely - although possibly some heat would help.
What I might do instead is lay some flexible cement or something over the whole lot - just to fill in the low spots, then add say 3mm foam layer then 8mm ply then the vinyl. (I might have to tape the joints first to prevent the grout stuff disappearing into the floor void but all the grout will be doing is supporting the ply layer evenly at the low spots.)

Anyone know it this is a reasonable plan and if so is Ardex or similar a good product for this application - or maybe just ordinary sand/cement?

Cheers
Richard

 

[glueman]

The easiest and most straight forward way of levelling your floor would be to fix 6mm ply, nailed with ring shank nails at 100mm centres. Apply Stopgap 500 to all joints and allow to dry. Apply 3/1 dilute P131 primer, allow to dry. Apply stopgap 700 Flex smoothing underlayment, allow to dry for at least twelve hours. Floor should be level enough to lay flooring now. Products are available from an F. Ball stockist.