Okay. Think I've solved how to level the concrete floor that I want to lay a floor down on, but it hinges on one critical thing - can anyone tell me what kind of material I can lay down on concrete between two points (say a couple of pieces of wood a few inches long and 1/2" high) in such a way that I can use a piece of wood or something else to screed the material dead flat and even with the two pieces of wood - using the wood pieces as guides?

I tried using some cement today but failed miserably - it just got thick and claggy and either stuck to the timber I was using to tamp the cement down between the two points, or came away in chunks from the concrete floor when I tried to actually work the timber backwards and forwards across the cement using the two pieces of wood as guides. Either I didn't use the right cement/water mix for this stuff (Sakrete), I need to use another type of cement, or I need to go in an entirely different direction and use something else.

Any ideas?

Firstly, most people use a levelling compound such as this...
http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc1v/R-100192482/h_d2/ProductDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=10051&catalogId=10053

I use a straight piece of PVC 2x4x10' from HD. Since it's man made it's as straight as practicable. Since it's not wood I wet the edges when I screed the levelling compound.

Sakrete is too thick and has an aggregate which makes it not usable to fill in shallow depressions.

Use the stuff in the link and follow the directions EXACTLY to mix. Be prepared and stage everything before mixing as this stuff sets up fast.....

I have a 5 piece set that go from 2 ft to 6 ft. Like this http://www.marshalltown.com/Products.as ... 22&C=C2175

Buy USA made!

Wow, I saved that link...I'm always looking for straight boards to do stuff like this and aluminum probably is far better.

@Branded. Actually, the stuff I got is a mix by Sakrete especially made for applications under half an inch, which is the job I have at hand - it's called 'Top n' bond concrete patcher'.

I initially bought the SLC you showed, but I got scared off it for two reasons, the first being that I read of a host of issues on trying to do a large area on my own with something so fast-setting (I can't get the slower stuff locally) and secondly, because the floor I'm working on has a slight slope which we have to stay with (the slab has a slight tilt and we'd compromise some steps trying to level it) the SLC might have a tendency to want to pool to the lower end of the floor - not sure but I didn't want to take the risk.

What I'm trying to do is this. I took some 2 x 4 and cut it into a hundred or so thin pieces ranging from wafer thin to 1/2" in thickness. I then found the high spot on the floor, and working from that, began using my level and a dead straight piece of timber 8' long to lay down lines of the 2 x 4 pieces in such a way that they marked the desired level of the floor. Lengthways in the room the lines are bubble-level, while going in the other direction they allow for the slope (in case anyone's curious on the slope angle, take a level and raise it till the bubble is dead on one of the lines, rather than in the middle - adds up to quite a bit over 14'!) End result is that you can now take a piece of string between any points in the room, and the floor is dead flat across the 2 x 4 pieces (the concrete floor itself is all over the place like a concrete yo-yo, as mentioned in another post).

Now, someone who really knows their stuff with cement might be able to take the wood pieces (now glued down) and use them as a handy reference to pour down some concrete and lay a dead even floor. but I have zero experience and zero confidence that I could do that. But what I thought I could manage via the whole exercise was to lay down some cement/compound BETWEEN each of the 2 x 4 pieces, level them out, then wait for the cement to dry. I would then be left with mini-forms in which I could pour batches of cement, using the dried cement lines as rests to help screed the new material, just as one does conventionally when using form-work to make a path or driveway.

Great in theory, but not in practice though! As I said, when I tried laying down a line of cement yesterday between a couple of the glued-down pieces of 2 x 4, I got nowhere.

On a different tack, handy idea on using the PVC. It's so damn hard trying to find a piece of wood with a dead straight edge.

Okay, figured it out. The prescribed mix is just too stiff and sandy, both to work in such thin/narrow layers and to adhere to the floor, so after some experimenting I came up with the following -

1) Sponging the surface with some water, as suggested on the packet, didn't help adhesion. Putting a little cement on the area, making it pasty by using fingers to sprinkle some water, then filming it over the prescribed area, did work.

2) Ignored the prescribed mix and went for 5 cups of cement to one of water - then added drops with fingers as necessary while working it into line shape.

3) Once roughly in place, sprinkled a few more drops of water up and down the line to give the surface a slightly creamy feel when running my fingers up and down the line. This helped enormously in screeding it without having it either stick to the wood or come away from the floor in clumps. Left it with a reasonably decent surface. Once dry, I'll check each once again for level and touch them up as needed.

Tedious I know, but when you're a complete dufus with cement you have to figure out some way to tame the beast!

Man Timbo, I think I coulda prepped your entire house in the amount of time I've spent on this thread, maybe just reading it alone.

So now you know what it takes to be a great installer and properly prep a slab. Oh, but then you would have gotten the right grinder with dustless capability vac, level/screed tool, Mapei SLC with primer and done.

Hint of sarcasm there steve?

No, just doing my best in very trying circumstances to deal with the financial fallout from having a supposed pro 'fix' the floor. I have however managed to take on $30,000 worth of mold remediation on my own, which included gutting entire rooms to the studs and removing/replacing sodden insulation in the roof. I've demolished a ridiculous pre-fabbed fireplace/chimney arrangement with associated repairs to the ceiling/roof. I've prepped an entirely new area for a kitchen by cutting into the slab (dust free) and setting new plumbing and drainage in place, as well as electrical cable to a proposed island, then laid in all the associated electrical cabling necessary for a new kitchen, and accomplished all to county specification or better. Following all this I used my own area of expertise, cabinet-making, to install full height cherry cabinets in the kitchen, then installed all the appliances, including the double-wall oven. Topping all this kitchen work was a reconstructed skylight replete with wooden screen, floating shelving along one wall, and a decorative slate relief built around a pantry recessed into the former fireplace cavity. Oh, and then there was the repairs to a cracked slab in the area and the tiling I finished the kitchen off with.

On top of that there's the recessed ceiling and Japanese screen built into the new dining area (formerly the kitchen) the 10' long bar I made myself, a built-in entertainment center to house a 60" TV with specially made drawers to hold our 2,000 DVD's, entire walls removed to open up the living areas of the house, standard archways and pillared archways in the main entry areas, art niches and built-in displays, built-in book-shelving in the kids rooms, built-in drawer units and shelving in bedroom closets, tray-ceiling in the lounge area, crown molding throughout the house, ornate casements around the windows, carpets installed, aluminum wiring stripped out and replaced with copper in each room, recessed lighting everywhere, popcorn removed from ceilings, knockdown on ceilings and walls, etc. Once the banks are hopefully out of the way I'll be converting a rear bedroom into a wood-lined study with ornate shelving and built-in desks, tearing down an ugly wall added to the Florida room overlooking our pool and installing sliding glass doors which I'll make myself to local hurricane standards, stripping out the bathrooms in the house and installing new plumbing, bathtubs, fixtures, slate, travertine, and so on, handling all the work on a newly built garage and master-suite extension once the foundations and walls are in put in place by contractors, starting with the trusses and roof then working my way down to everything associated with the interiors, then starting work on converting the old garage into an extended living space, with a new half bath included, with glass walls/doors leading to a terraced and screened courtyard with pergolas shading from the hot Florida sun. Finally comes the re shingling of our home, guttering, and reconfiguring the front of the home - stonework, new wooden pillars, shaker siding - to give it an Arts and Crafts look. All this on my little lonesome and through years of figuring out solutions on ways to manage projects single-handed, and without having to tax people like you for problematic answers that are obviously such an imposition.

This crap with the floor has taken over two weeks out of an 8 week deadline suddenly thrust upon us to finish the house in time for a bank inspection that will determine if we have completed our current work to the standards of our particular loan, otherwise they'll call it in. Think that's amusing as well and worthy of your sarcasm? Or that I feel like strangling the idiot we let loose on the floor in the first place, or that we didn't have the money to spare to have someone else come in and do this work? All we have managed to do has only been accomplished by dint of the savings made via my sweat, labor, and expertise/determination, else we'd have managed next to nothing within the tight financial constraints we started with. My time doesn't even factor into it, much as it should under normal circumstances.

As to your erudite observations on my shared fumbling attempts to come to some sort of solution with the concrete, I have already made it abundantly clear why I ended up steering away from SLC due to my lack of expertise and because others warned me that it would be nigh on impossible for me to try and do the floor properly on my own - also, given what I mentioned about the slope to the room, I'd be intrigued to hear how a master concrete tradesman such as yourself would accurately accomplish using SLC to render the new surface dead flat and at the required tilt, especially if you saw what kind of state our floor had been left in? As to the primer, I'm well aware that a bonding agent is suggested, and I was going to buy some. However, the particular cement I purchased stated that I should moisten the surface instead, so I went with the manufacturer's recommendation. Didn't work for my particular application, found an alternative on the spot that worked - end of story. Grinder? It actually was the correct grinder, had hoses attached to a proper Vac unit, but still caused dust issues - crap happens. If I hadn't been so pressed for time I might have dicked around trying to figure it out, but I didn't. My most humble apologies that the approach didn't meet your lofty expectations. As for the screeding tool, your problem is? I have the standard piece of straight lumber that most artisans use, made a comment about someone else's alternative and interesting suggestion, and......? Are you upset that you didn't receive fulsome praise for the alternative you offered up?

If you find the posts of someone desperately trying to solve an issue tedious, and have little if anything constructive to say, than you have the easy and quite tenable option of simply bypassing the posts altogether.

Thanks to all who actually offered appropriate and appreciated assistance in difficult circumstances. You can now have the floor (pun intended) all to yourself Steve.

SLC is the easiest compound to use, even for a superlative DIY'er like yourself. It is fluid, does not set fast if you use cooled water, wait it's winter, use regaular water. Screeds well. I dunno, just seems like if you actually tried to find a real pro instead of a hillbilly and son team to do it you woulda had the floor down by now.

My problem is people don't listen or try and go cheap and do it them selves when they know it is beyound their capability. Actually I take that back. I could teach a green helper how to screed SLC is about five minutes. It's not brain surgery. I think I even explained how to do it earlier in some thread. And now your framing out boxes on the floor? It is frustrating to say the least.