Laying floor screed: guidelines and costs
29.06.2014
After a customer chooses the decor for his flooring, he must be eager to install it and enjoy the refreshed look of his home. But before installing the laminate flooring, one must make sure that the foundation for the flooring is leveled. It is a very important step, that must be completed before you cover your floor in order to avoid additional expenses in the future, because if your floor was not perfectly leveled, after a while your joints might get deffected, even cracks may appear. The least that you will get is the creak and squeak, and you do not want that.
There are two ways of leveling a floor: 1) creating a wooden skeleton or frame, similar to one that we usually make when installing wall panels; 2) laying floor screed. Between these two the floor screed is more expensive, more durable and will give you a better feeling to your floor, because it will make your foundation more solid.
We have prepared a short guidiline, that wil give you a better undestanding of the process, steps and cots involved. The calculations are based on 100 sq.m. area.
Floor screed based on a mix of sand and cement is layed in three steps:
1. Figuring out the level of your screed, keeping in mind that the minimal thickness must be 3 cm.
2. Installing the screed strips ( distance between screed strips must reach 1 m). screed strips must be fixed with cement mix.
3. Preparing the mix and laying in on the floor. The optima ration of cement to sand is 1:3.
Screed strips: Usually these are 2,5 m long and as of today they cost 20 MDL for a piece. For our area we would require 20 screed strips.
Cement: Commonly cement is sold in 50 kg bags, that cost around 85 MDL per bag or 1,7 MDL for a kilo. For 1 sq. m. we would need around 16 kg.
Sand: Price for sand veries, because you have two options in Moldova: one is to buy sand in 25 kg bags, that cost 8 MDL or you can order a wholesale purchase of sand, but for that a minimum of 3 t is requires and that would cost 700 MDL. Per kilo price if you buy per bag is 0,32 MDL and 0,23 MDL if you buy wholesale. 1 sq. m. usually requires 48 kg of sand. So a 100 sq.m. area would use 4,8 t of sand!
Water: Cost of 1 cubic meter of water is 9,19 MDL. You would need 1 m.cub. for an area of 100 sq. m.
Specialist's service: The market price for a hired specialist is 50 MDL per sq. m.
So, here's an outlay of cement-sand floor screed:
There are two ways of leveling a floor: 1) creating a wooden skeleton or frame, similar to one that we usually make when installing wall panels; 2) laying floor screed. Between these two the floor screed is more expensive, more durable and will give you a better feeling to your floor, because it will make your foundation more solid.
We have prepared a short guidiline, that wil give you a better undestanding of the process, steps and cots involved. The calculations are based on 100 sq.m. area.
Floor screed based on a mix of sand and cement is layed in three steps:
1. Figuring out the level of your screed, keeping in mind that the minimal thickness must be 3 cm.
2. Installing the screed strips ( distance between screed strips must reach 1 m). screed strips must be fixed with cement mix.
3. Preparing the mix and laying in on the floor. The optima ration of cement to sand is 1:3.
Screed strips: Usually these are 2,5 m long and as of today they cost 20 MDL for a piece. For our area we would require 20 screed strips.
Cement: Commonly cement is sold in 50 kg bags, that cost around 85 MDL per bag or 1,7 MDL for a kilo. For 1 sq. m. we would need around 16 kg.
Sand: Price for sand veries, because you have two options in Moldova: one is to buy sand in 25 kg bags, that cost 8 MDL or you can order a wholesale purchase of sand, but for that a minimum of 3 t is requires and that would cost 700 MDL. Per kilo price if you buy per bag is 0,32 MDL and 0,23 MDL if you buy wholesale. 1 sq. m. usually requires 48 kg of sand. So a 100 sq.m. area would use 4,8 t of sand!
Water: Cost of 1 cubic meter of water is 9,19 MDL. You would need 1 m.cub. for an area of 100 sq. m.
Specialist's service: The market price for a hired specialist is 50 MDL per sq. m.
So, here's an outlay of cement-sand floor screed:
| Item | Sum | Q-ty | Price |
| Screed strips | 400 MDL | 20 pcs | 20 MDL |
| Cement | 2720 MDL | 1600 kg | 1,7 MDL |
| Sand | 1536 MDL | 4800 kg | 0,32 MDL |
| Water | 9,19 MDL | 1 cubic meter | 9,19 MDL |
| Specialist's service | 5000 MDL | 100 sq.m. | 50 MDL |
| TOTAL | 9665,19 MDL |
After all, for a 100 sq.m. floor screed you would need: 20 screed strips , 32 bags of cement, 62 bags of sand (or 4,8 t if bought wholsale), 1 cubic meter of water, good specialist and 9665,19 MDL.
