Additionally, there were minimum thickness requirements. When it was done, you would need to install a metal or plastic lath product over the floor for reinforcement first. Up until recently, wood subfloors, either plywood or OSB, were not common to pour self-leveling over. Tec 567 Contractor Grade Self-Leveling Underlayment.I consider them to be widely available because they can be purchased through many of the retail hardware store chains. Having a concrete subfloor opens up the most self-leveling underlayment choices and that means more affordability, as well.īelow is a list of widely available self-leveling underlayment products that can be used over concrete. So, just having those two pieces of information will narrow down the choices quite a bit. The second thing to determine is what flooring, if any, will you be installing on top of the leveling compound? For this post, we will obviously assume tile. If it’s wood, it should be either plywood or OSB if you are planning on pouring an SLU over it. Typically, it will either be concrete or wood. Substrate is a technical word which is referring to the surface that is being built over. Preparing this plywood substrate for a self-leveling pour Substrateįirst things first, what is the substrate that you want to flatten? Note: rather than spell out “self-leveling underlayment” all the time I will use the industry-accepted initials of SLU at times throughout this post. So, let’s get into why you would pick one over another. Additionally, some are rapid-setting, some need metal lath reinforcement, etc.Ĭonsequently, each product has its own purpose. Some self-leveling underlayments are cementitious while others are gypsum-based. So, how complicated can it be? Why not just mix the product and go?įor starters, simply selecting the product that you want requires some consideration.įor example, I looked at the sites of Mapei, Ardex, Schonox, Uzin, and Custom Building Products and counted no less than 9 different self-leveling underlayment products on each site. Planning for a self-leveling underlayment pour I don’t consider myself an expert at self-leveling but I have learned a lot.Īnd it all starts with knowing what you are getting yourself into. With this post, I’m going to share what I know. Additionally, being able to use these over wood subfloors is going to increase their usage. Where a 12×12 (30cm x 30cm) used to be big now it’s quite common to deal with wood-look tile that is 48 inches long (120cm) and installed in a random offset pattern.Īs a result, bigger tiles require flatter floors. Self-leveling underlayment has a bright future
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