Can I use leveling screed on vinyl floor tiles?
May 28, 2012 4:16 PM   Subscribe

Can I use leveling screed on vinyl floor tiles?

I live in an ex-council flat and they have concreted the bathroom floor by pouring concrete in the middle and letting it level itself - resulting in small dome of concrete, which they then tiled over!

Aside from the inconvenience - the door has to be at the height of the highest bit of the floor meaning there's a gap when it's closed - any splashed bathwater pools into one corner and it's getting damp. I can't afford to get the floor leveled down, so I'd like to level up the corners so the lino lies flatter, by perhaps .5cm or so.

Does this sound like a good idea, and do you have any tips for getting it right? The room not including the bath is 1.6 x 1.7m.
posted by krissf to Home & Garden (7 answers total)
 
You can use either a self leveling compound or screeded mortar to level this out; both would be better if applied directly to the concrete rather than over vinyl tile.

The John Bridge Tile forums are an excellent resource on everything tile floor including leveling. A search there for levelling floor returns hundreds of threads on the subject.

If it was me I'd remove the vinyl tiles, grind down the high spot/center (you just need a vacuum and an angle grinder), and then pour a thin coat of self leveller over the floor. The flooring of your choice can then be applied over top. This would give the best result with minimal heigth added to the floor.

PS: You should have a bit of a gap at the bottom of the door as a ready source of make up air to allow your exhaust fan to function.
posted by Mitheral at 5:12 PM on May 28, 2012


Why would grinding down the high area cost less than bringing up the rest of the floor? Half-assing things is never a good idea; I suggest following Mitheral's directions for both bringing down the high point and releveling the floor.
posted by Forktine at 7:44 PM on May 28, 2012


Why would grinding down the high area cost less than bringing up the rest of the floor?

I meant, why would it cost more?
posted by Forktine at 8:10 PM on May 28, 2012


I think Mitheral's suggesting the grind-down because the highest spot on the floor is relatively small, and it would require a lot of leveling compound to fill basically the whole room up by 0.5cm. If you could trim down a few mm of the highest point, that takes quite a bit of volume out of the correction.
posted by aimedwander at 5:45 AM on May 29, 2012


I doubt the leveling screed would stick to the vinyl very well, and I think it would start to crumble in short order. If you can pull the tile out, then it would work better. But you'd need to clean up the concrete so the stuff sticks. I think thinset mortar is the stuff to use in this case, with a bonding adhesive.

As messy as it would be, tearing out the vinyl tile and grinding down the high spots and then levelling is the better option. Or possibly removing the concrete: By your description, it sounds like the concrete was an add-on? So it probably isn't that thick. Maybe you can get under it and pry it up so that it will break out in chunks?
posted by gjc at 6:36 AM on May 29, 2012


Self-leveling compounds differ. Look for one that can go down to a feather-edge and that can be 0.5 cm thick without mesh or wire. It shouldn't be too hard to meet those requirements.

If you do want to grind it down, you can rent the equipment rather than paying someone to do it.
posted by slidell at 11:13 PM on May 29, 2012


Response by poster: Thanks everyone.

The flat I live in is a 60s modern brick-built flat with concrete stairs and floors. The concrete of the bathroom floor isn't so much an add on as the floor itself on top of (I assume) concrete slabs. The tiles were put there in the 60s and very difficult to remove evenly. The workmanship isn't really that great.

When you say 'you just need an angle grinder'... that is a bit beyond my skillset and budget which suggests I probably shouldn't be trying either solution :-)
posted by krissf at 4:44 PM on May 31, 2012


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