We've been planning on putting down a solid wood floor in our lounge area, and to that end I did my homework and read that the tolerances for deviation in the concrete are small in glue down operations. I checked the floor and discovered that there were some issues, mainly a high spot in one area which created a slight ridge across the width of the floor, with the floor being about 1/4" out of bubble level either end of the room in relation to the high spot/ridge. Aside from that it was dead flat (not level, but flat) except for a couple of small shallow depressions. The other issue was that the entire floor, ridge and all, inclined towards the short side of the room, with the deviation being about 1/2" from one side of the room to the other.

Bottom line, we decided to have the floor completely leveled by a concrete professional, and called in someone suggested by a neighbor.

The guy rolled up with a 2 x 4 and a level to do some initial checking, but needn't have bothered as I'd already drawn out lines on the floor and set up some leveled lengths of wood of my own to show where the issues were. (I later discovered that the 2 x 4 he'd brought along was as bent as a banana, which should have set off the warning lights!) After checking it all out he gave us a quote of $600 including materials to do the 20 x 14 room, which was about double what I expected, but as I figured he'd need a fair bit of material and might have to put in a fair amount of work getting a true level across the entire room I thought that maybe I'd under-estimated the extent of the work, so I ended up agreeing to the figure.

Later that afternoon his son turned up and did some grinding down of the high spots, which seemed to auger well, though I was a little puzzled why he started working areas at what I knew to be the low side of the floor.

Next day the son turned up and took me by surprise when he started filling in the few shallow spots I knew existed, rather than setting out to level the entire floor. When I called him on it, he claimed he'd been misled by his father and that he was simply flattening out the room lengthways, rather than bubble-leveling the entire thing as I'd expected and thought I'd paid for. There could have been no doubt on the matter, as I had numerous pieces of wood set at bubble level when they came round in order to show the deviations and to show the level to which I expected the floor to be raised. A series of phone calls later, his disgruntled father turned up, and they began ladling cement all over the floor and working it around, and I breathed a sigh of relief that I was finally getting what we needed. Only problem was that we didn't get anything like what we needed!

Just watching the patriarch of the family at work set off all sorts of alarm bells as it seemed the guy was clearly free-handing everything with nary a thought to our requirements. The first concern was when they started laying the cement fairly thickly at the high end of the room, which seemed odd as I figured they would use it as the bench mark to both make a level line across the length of the room and then use it to work their way 'down' the lower level of the floor. At no stage did the guy ever pull out a level to check his work or set a base measure (in fact I don't think he had one with him nor did he avail himself of the opportunity to use either of mine that were handy) and the way he kept 'floating' out each new bucket of cement made me nervous as heck, because I could clearly see that while he had a nice clean line in the central 3 - 4 feet of the piece of wood, it was clearly evident that there were significant gaps showing at the ends - even his son pointed it out to him a few times! When they had finished the first layer the father said they had to leave it for a while to set and that they'd be back in an hour to lay down the skim coat.

After they left I looked down at the work and the untidy nature of the finish. and just hoped that the next stage was going to give me a considerably cleaner look - and all I could do was hope that the guy was some kind of concreting genius who's claimed twenty years experience had given him such an eye that he knew exactly what he was doing without recourse to something as mundane as a level!

Three hours later (yes three, not one) father and son returned, and the elder began the process of slopping the skim coat around and doing everything conceivable to blow my expectations of a clean and accurate finish out the water. I’m no expert on the subject, but I have seen plenty who are and their workmanship always look so easy, smooth and professional – this guy constantly kept digging the near end of the trowel into the cement because he wouldn’t incline it enough, left trowel marks and ridges everywhere, and kept spraying bonding agent on the older surface like some demented fire marshal trying to put out a raging fire – according to him, the skim coat was drying too quickly on him because the older surface was so dry that it was leeching out all the moisture.

After he finished he assured me that, despite appearances, the floor was to the specification I required for my wood flooring and that it didn’t need to be perfect cosmetically under the circumstances. I didn’t care about the cosmetics, I simply wanted it to be dead level. Did we get what we wanted or needed? No. The floor in actual fact turned out to be worse than it was before.

I went over it the next day and was left completely demoralized by just how lousy a job had been done on it. Forget any notion of it being level bubble wise – the drop to one side of the room was still there, and not only had they not eliminated the slight ridge that was evident before, they’d laid in a few new ones, as well as leaving buildup along the walls that was half an inch thick and an inch wide in places. According to the wood flooring guides I have tolerances down to 3/16ths of an inch I’m supposed to work at a distance of 10 feet. We now have ridges and depressions that are at variances of 2/10ths within just a few feet, even ¼ inch drops in places.

We can’t afford to get someone else to do this again (we already hadn’t budgeted for the $600 this individual took from us) so I have to try and find a way to solve this myself – like everything else. It’s very disheartening, because every time we’ve called in outside help for our house we’ve been royally screwed – it gets to a point where you wonder if there’s any honest and competent tradesmen left, at least here in Orlando. Getting our pool fixed, roofing done, carpets professionally cleaned, custom kitchen cabinets made/installed, granite countertops put in place, and now this – each time it’s been a disaster. And it's not as if we're looking for bottom dollar either - just reliable people we can trust to do a decent job.

I’ve attached some pictures of the work, as well as a map I did of the room showing where all the depressions are. As mentioned, the room drops half an inch towards the widow side,(as marked, but I’m not even taking this into account any more – I just want it level lengthways in the room. which is the direction the wood is going to be laid. The gray areas on the map show depressions of 1/10 of an inch, red goes down to 2/10ths, and purple is ¼”. As the rule of thumb I’m aware of is 3/16” over 10 feet, I’d consider that we’re pretty well screwed on that score with all the little peaks and hollows everywhere!

So what do I do? Try and grind down the high areas so I only have a few small spots to fill in? I can rent a 7 inch grinder at HD for $35 for 24 hours, and then buy the appropriate blade for $85. Or should I leave the high spots in place and just try and fill in the other areas? And what do I use – the guys who did the first job used 8 bags of ‘Patcher’ to do their work, and I read on the bag that it can be used to a minimum of ½ an inch and a maximum of 2” – so I don’t think it would be applicable. Tool wise for cement I have zilch other than a trowel - my first preference would be some method that's dead easy, like some kind of cement or compound I can ladle on to the depressions and simply level out with a straight-edged piece of timber, using the high points as a a leveling guide and smoothing down the edges as I go along.

Lastly, the point about getting the guy who made the mess to clean it up is certainly an obvious one, but at this stage it’s merely a money thing as I wouldn’t let the guy anywhere near the floor to try and repair his ‘repairs’ after what I witnessed.

Sorry about the lengthy post – any advice or help would be much appreciated.

Thanks

PS - Couldn't figure out how to load the pictures here, so I put them on photobucket. Hope the link isn't out of bounds!

http://s1007.photobucket.com/albums/af1 ... 85280f.jpg

Interesting story. I always start by grinding the high spots first. This keeps you from having to fill more than you need to.
Get at least a six foot metal level and drag it across the floor, circle the high spots, grind, check, grind again until as flat as possible. Forget about bubble level. Then use the level to screed a line of patch or self leveling compound over the low spots.
I would be pretty wary about his patch even sticking in the first place. Then apply wood movement, could pull it right off the slab.


Now lets hear why your going to install solid hardwood on concrete. I hope it is a thinner solid like 5/16 or 3/8.

Yeah Steve, it's 3/8 otherwise I wouldn't even consider the project. I always figured that the flooring would have enough moderate flex to deal with slight imperfections, but not the stuff we've been left with.

Thanks for the info - that's more or less what I was hoping to hear as far as how to correct the problem. Only one thing - are you still suggesting I use 'patcher' even though the package says the minimum layer should be half an inch? I was actually leaning towards SLC , though I've never used it before - because of the slight downward slope of the entire floor, I was a little concerned that the SLC might try and run 'down' the floor a bit when I apply it if it's too watery - or is it thick enough that it will essentially lay where I put it down and spread it? Not having used it, I don't know if there's a stock mix with water, or if you can make it thicker to suit circumstances or conditions.

One last thought - would it solved the problem to go an entirely different route and glue down or screw in ply sheets and then glue the wood to the ply? The room in question is a sunken living room at the front of the house - the two access points are the foyer and the family area, and a step leads down from each.

By the way, you didn't actually say anything about the work we had done - it is bad, right, and I'm not being picky?

Oh well Timbo, if it's sunken livingroom by all means just do the floating plywood subfloor. No need to fasten the ply to anything. Besides, if your using solid below grade your not gettin no warranty anyhow. And gluing any solid below grade is just bad juju.

Get'r flat as possible, use Bostik's MVP4, then use minimum 6 mil plastic wrapped up the wall a few inches and start nailing the wood down. I prefer using two layers of 1/2 inch ply, installed at right angles to each other and overlap the seams half way. This way your subfloor/underlayment and wood floor is "isolated" from the concrete and emissions from the concrete. I'd bet that slab has no vapor retarder under it either.

The worst that could happen is that your patch, if it is not exterior grade, could turn to mush. Thats why you need to contact a real professional before you try this.

Typically any patch or SLC thats going under a moisture vapor film or adhesive needs to be exterior grade and thats not usually avaliable at a Box store. That should go on top of the vapor retarder. And then some of those that go on top need a primer.

So I would first check to see if that patch is exterior grade patch.

Hi Stephen,
I'm just about to head off to bed but I'll get this up before switching off for the night.

When you say 'below grade' do I assume you're working on the assumption that the floor of the sunken living room is lower to the soil that the rest of the house - as with a basement? In actual fact it's not - other than the foyer, it's actually at the highest point of the house in relation to the natural lay of the land, as our home is built on a distinct slope, with this particular room on the downhill side about 4' above the slope outside.

Two points to the ply base. Is that the alternative you're suggesting, as against the glue down? And how solid will it feel if I merely have it floating, as you suggest, and merely glue down the wood flooring to the ply - any squeaky flooring as far as the ply is concerned? One point I liked about glue down was the solid feel to it, as against the odd sensation one gets from conventional floating floors 'giving' as you walk on them.

I obviously have to go and study up on this a bit - all my homework has been on glue down! But thank you for that insight into how to put the ply down - I would never have thought to lay them across like that in two layers - I had visions of copious amounts of glue and carefully butting 3/4 inch sheets together!

Thanks again........Tim

There's allot of info here on floating ply sub-floors, no they don't squeak and are quite heavy. You could even use some floor muffler under the ply and over top the MVP4 if you want. Screw the sheets together and leave a gap around each.

Thanks Steve, much appreciated.

Don't forget the sister site; http://www.hardwoodinstaller.com/hardwoodinstaller/

It's the best reference for installing hardwood out there.

But hard to find nowadays

thanks SP!

Some other guy said that it didn't show on a search recently. Thats horrible.

FYI - I did pick up this page on the first page of a google search for installing hardwood floors over concrete; http://www.hardwoodinstaller.com/hardwo ... ncrete.htm

It's the new Google SP. Though few will notice. They're geared more now to recognized brands. For instance if you search for hardwood floors and find Home Depot and Lowes (and other retailers) on the first page, most searchers are happy that they returned/showed a familiar name regardless if it has a good answer to the searched term. Gone are the days of finding those sweet informative niche sites. That is unless you look on page two.

Boss, are you hijacking this thread?

I believe searchers will be grow wise to the new Google, ( looking for the information they really want).... just another example of big money and politics over quality

Have to whine somewhere