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Insulated plasterboard! Brilliant stuff.

Just done the guest bedroom in this - 30mm and 12 mm, takes up the same space as the original lime plaster, which is now acting as underfilling for the hard standing at the new workshop.

Only comment is that insulated plasterboard won't let an old building breathe. But then I am turning into a snob about old buildings as I do more research into renovating mine and correcting a few issues from a 30yr old renovation.

But hadn't thought about reusing the old lime plaster as some hardcore...might give me something to do with the 20 or so bags of the stuff I have, with more on the walls to come off. Just have to get rid of the gypsum stuff elsewhere.

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Well, I hear you on the breathing, but I figure that there is an air gap between the plasterboard and the stone wall, so it should breathe there, also the wall is stone and lime jointing (with acidic coal dust) so should be okay, once I've removed the jointing and replaced it with proper lime putty and gray aggregate.

Just another job on the list.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Geoff - I have exactly the stuff for your flooring woes - I used Cementone Cempolay Ultra Strong Self Levelling Floor Compound (blue bag) it's outdoors-rated heavy-duty screed, about £30 a bag from Jewsons:

http://forums.lr4x4.com/index.php?showtopic=92077&p=811303

Got a plasterer to throw it down, took him all of a couple of hours from starting his cuppa to smoking a celebratory rollup.

When you laid this, did you just pour the whole floor in one go did you need to lay screeds first (I'm guessing screeds from the drying time - you wouldn't have time to level the whole floor?)? Did you just use the mix as is or did you need to add sand? How thick did you need to lay it (I'm going to have fairly thick areas, I think)?

Trying to work out what's involved and what materials I need, and Cempolay Ultra seems to have pretty sketchy info online!

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When I did mine it was only one half of the floor that needed covering/levelling, as the other half was new flat concrete.

I primed the target area with some SBR diluted in water in a garden sprayer, left it to dry/soak in for a few days, then basically the plasterer bloke mixed up a BIG bucket of the Cempolay screed at a time and sloshed it down onto the floor & levelled it with his plasterers trowel thingymabob. It takes a while to properly dry out (in my case it was cold & wet out too which doesn't help). Didn't need to add anything, just mix it to the recipe on the packet and whack it down. I didn't notice max/min thicknesses but at a guess the deepest holes/chips in the floor were 30-50mm deep and at the other end it ended up maybe 5mm or less where it tapers into the new section of floor.

TBH every screed, paint, and random flooring compound I looked at had very sketchy technical info, but the Cemploay Ultra seemed to tick the main boxes (max/min depth, cold/wet tolerant, heavy load tolerant, and less than a million pounds a bag). I figured if they sell it to builders it must be reasonably idiot-proof :ph34r:

Likewise with the epoxy paint, I went with Ask because they were helpful on the phone and reassured me that despite their tech spec being much the same as everyone else's (thou shalt wait 3 months for the concrete to cure), I could use it on a new floor and it'd be fine.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Well, made up a jumbo sized spirit level (two planks screwed together, with a spirit level sat on top - not exactly precision engineering, but it's probably as accurate as a cheap laser level...) and discovered there's about 54mm of variance in the floor level. Bit beyond levelling compound! Unfortunately the lowest areas are across the back so won't drain, so it has to be sorted. It slopes down at the front too, but that's not really a problem.

So, took delivery of sand, gravel and cement today - enough to make a third of a cubic metre of concrete which is what I reckon I need to level up the rear part of the floor and a low patch in one front corner. Doesn't sound like much when you put it like that... Cement mixer booked for Monday.

I've also taken Fridge's advice and laid in some Cempolex Ultra to level it all up properly once I've got it roughly there with concrete.

Need to take some photos.

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Anyone know what I can reasonably get away with as the minimum time between laying concrete to level the floor up (maximum 54mm) and laying the cempolay ultra leveling compound on top? The cempolay instructions say the concrete must be fully cured, which as far as I can see online is generally considered as 28 days (although strictly the concrete carries on curing for years).

Ideally I could do with laying it a lot sooner than this, but how risky is it?

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Geoff - I don't think it's too critical, the cempolay stuff is permeable anyway. Everything says concrete must be fully cured but I suspect that's 90% ar5e-covering as the builders, and builders merchants, seemed entirely relaxed about the subject. Give you're only worried about a 54mm deep section that shouldn't require a lot of curing.

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Geoff,

You are correct, concrete cures throughout its life, having said that 28 days is the time concrete should take to reach its design strength.

I can't help you with when to lay the cempolay, but if you allow 28 days great, otherwise I would give it at least 10-14days and if you can heat/dehumidify throughout that would help quicken the curing.

Before anyone says, as a civil engineer, I am aware that you don't want to force the curing or the concrete to dry out, and doing so will weaken the ultimate strength but for a thin layer and the likely location in the garage, I think you could get away with it.

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Well, concrete is down, and I'm reasonably happy with it. It's not the smoothest surface, but it doesn't need to be with leveling compound going on top, and it's leveled up the lowest areas (I used 10mm gravel in the mix, so that limited the area I could do - when I got down to 10mm below the high point I had to stop.

I've got a small oil filled radiator that can go out there, but the dehumidifier is doing rather more essential service in the cellar where my tools are stored at the moment. We're in Somerset and the new garage is fairly warm anyway (cavity walls and an insulated door - no insulation in the roof, but so far I don't think I'll want it. We'll see what I think come the middle of winter).

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Fridge - do you know if the coverage quoted by ASK Coatings for the epoxy paint is per coat or allows for both coats? Tried calling them but their office is closed 'til Tuesday and I need to get it ordered (though whether it'll get shipped before then anyway is another matter).

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Thanks Fridge. Hoping the 12.5l I've ordered will stretch to my 30m2 floor. Probably should have ordered 15l instead, but it's not cheap stuff!


Promised some photo's, so here goes.


Nice level floor...

IMAG0744



This is the lowest point - over 50mm below the high point (and at the back of the garage, with no-where to drain to):

IMAG0746



Deep bits now filled with concrete - it'll be finished with levelling compound over this:

IMAG0747


IMAG0749



As you can see I have the opposite to Fridge - I'm rather restricted on length, but my garage is nice and wide.

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  • 5 months later...

Okay, way overdue but this is the current state of play in my garage. Floor is sort of level (not as flat as I'd have liked, but good enough. It's the only real disappointment), and painted. Went for a smooth finish so I can lay things on it without damaging them too easily - this has pluses and minuses. It's easy to slide things across (or yourself if you're lying under a vehicle), but that also means things slide when you don't want them to. All machinery is going to need rubber feet.

Making do for now with the existing shelving - but the plan is to replace this lot with some decent heavy duty shelves / cupboard space. This is as far as the white paint on the walls currently extends!

imag0938 resized 800

The workbench is just an old desk, and spent a lot of time out in the rain during the building work. It'll do for now, but I'd like to replace it with something more substantial. Sink is still to be installed once I've painted the rest of the walls.

imag0940 resized 800

The floor slopes down to the door, but that's not a big problem - at least it drains in the right direction!

imag0939 resized 800

Next jobs are finishing the wall painting and installing loft boards on the roof trusses so I can get all the lighter carp out of the way. Had kittens when I worked out I'd need 90 loft boards, but that's actually only about £200 worth.

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That slight slope is a good thing - I would make it that way deliberately as it'll minimise problems if you ever get a leak or some minor flooding.

I have a similar sized garage in the UK. The floor was poorly levelled and has a few big cracks from drying too fast. The main problem is the doors - it has two up and over doors which just let the lightweight squeeze under and are just wide enough for the RRC, but with the shelving down one side and workbenches along the other, it makes getting the vehicles in impossible on one side and tight on the other - I have to use wheel trucks (the steel trucks with four castors for each car wheel) to move the car into a workable position. A door like yours would be much better, and I'd like to move the front lintels up to one big lintel level with front ends of the roof trusses to create a tall enough door to get the 109 or a Defender in. So, you have a lot of the things I'd like to do already.

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That slight slope is a good thing - I would make it that way deliberately as it'll minimise problems if you ever get a leak or some minor flooding.

I have a similar sized garage in the UK. The floor was poorly levelled and has a few big cracks from drying too fast. The main problem is the doors - it has two up and over doors which just let the lightweight squeeze under and are just wide enough for the RRC, but with the shelving down one side and workbenches along the other, it makes getting the vehicles in impossible on one side and tight on the other - I have to use wheel trucks (the steel trucks with four castors for each car wheel) to move the car into a workable position. A door like yours would be much better, and I'd like to move the front lintels up to one big lintel level with front ends of the roof trusses to create a tall enough door to get the 109 or a Defender in. So, you have a lot of the things I'd like to do already.

When I had my garage built since I was starting from new I specified a door high enough to get the 90 in. The architect said he now always advices increased height doors now if the building allows as its not just 4x4's that don't fit under a standard door, many people carriers won't fit either and vehicles have generally got bigger over the years.

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Something like this would work well for me as my garage slopes up from the doors, meaning swing doors won't work. http://www.thegaragedoorcentre.co.uk/hormannsidesectionaldoors.php

I looked at them (side sectional doors, for those that can't be bothered visiting the link), as a way of keeping the roof as low as possible. The downside to them is that they take up an entire wall. Guess you could run them behind shelving, but you'd have to make sure it was't possible for anything to get pushed back in the way of the door.

And if you're builder cocks up and your floor is way off level I'm not sure there's any way you could fit one - short of hammering a groove out of the floor :rolleyes:

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You'd need a substantial amount of lift given the length of a garage door, unless the slope of the floor is actually pretty small.

There's also the side effect that that type of hinge is mainly designed to make the door self closing, which isn't all that desirable in a garage door. They usually have a flat when fully open to "park" the door, but if gets nudged or catches a gust and starts moving it's going to keep on coming, and probably pick up fair bit of momentum by the time it hits you/your truck/one of the kids...

That's assuming you can get that type of hinge in a large enough size? I've only ever seen them on smaller (personnel) doors.

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