Floor thread - self levelling, carpet tiles etc

[Onlyhalfdone]

Hi thought I'd start a separate thread for this.

hand held mains / 110v drill or paddle mixer? It's an awful lot easier to mix self levelling compound with a paddle mixer? i have the paddles just not a drill.
gorilla tub / dust bin to mix it in.
Floor trowl / plasterers trowel to apply.
A spiked roller is the best but not sure it's worth buying one (it removes any air bubbles and stimulates it levelling)
Sponge / cloths to wipe and clean where we splatter it!
Water supply and a way of measuring by the litre, I seem to recall around 7 litres per bag.
Soft brush / vacuume to prep the floor.

[YouMustBe Joking]

I can lend a vacuum cleaner and a 110v transformer and drill if needed. Let me know so I can get them in the car tomorrow. 

Tim

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[Samwise Wilson]

We have a SDS drill at the space that should be suitable for your paddle andy. 

Invest the £20 in a spiked roller!

Someone im sure can come up with a hose; either way the bathroom is nearby and we could work towards there leaving via corridor.

We had planned to get a "wet/dry work vac" to abuse for the build process anyway!

Do we want to do the whole area or just the workshop?

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[Callum Snowden]

I can sort hose, got plenty of spare hosepipe and pipe fittings at home.

[Onlyhalfdone]

Thanks callum sounds like a plan.

Biggest issue I am having now is finding a suitable self leveling compound. none of the cheaper ones are wearing courses - they require a floor covering.

we can wing it and just paint over it for now and see what the result is, or go for a much dearer one which I'm yet to find one lol.

Personally I'm thinking apply as thin as we can and then paint.

[Samwise Wilson]

Some of the current workshop floor bits are rather high so 2mm might not cut it! 

[Onlyhalfdone]

I'll have a look tomorrow night, this stuff bonds really well to concrete, so other then it wearing away in time I think it should be good.

[Onlyhalfdone]

Not been to the space yet but I do have some more info.

My flooring contractor can provide a self levelling compound which is a wearing course also, so can just be painted over. It's £20 a bag plus vat and typically will do 4 to 5 square metres. It needs primed first but primers not a lot and 1 tub should do it. Just need to know how big an area you want doing?

Carpet tile, I'm picking up a swatch tomorrow they can provide a tough carpet tile for £6 per metre plus vat in a range of colours, they are 5 year guaranteed. I'm also popping to there warehouse to see what other stuff they have on the cheap list.

This is comprable to the eBay prices we've seen with the bonus of being able to look at samples. Nothing's going to be cheaper then finding a job lot that no body wants but it's an option.

[Samwise Wilson]

The whole floor area needing it is 74m2. Workship is about 50m2 of that.

[Andy51055]

I'd say that we're just about ready for doing this. All that's needed is to clear stuff out of the areas to be screeded and the floors cleaned, which can be done in a morning.

Onwards!

[Tim Pinder]

My only question would be how long does it take to cure? - I assume it’s absolutely no access during that period so work needs to be arranged around that (no water, no toilets, no access to kitchen/corridor/etc)

.

Tim

[Andy51055]

Mostly they seem to take 24-28 hours, which shouldn't cause any problems.

[Andy Cook]

I've not used this one before but normal self levelling you can walk on it the next day. It's a self levelling wearing screed which is a little unique we definatley don't want marks in the surface. Is the area outside of the workshop getting carpet tiles? If so it doesn't generally need to be self levelled just locally repaired. If it's being covered by carpet we can just use regular self levelling compound anyway.

Regards

[Andy Cook]

Also I know we are a little way off needing the carpet tiles... But have you thought about colours yet? Can I suggest someone take the accurate space measurement and just overlay a 500mm2 grid over it which will give you the number of tiles and aid working out where the cuts will be.

I'd suggested using a mix of colours to make it easier to replace in the future / cope with colour fade etc. I'd like to get the quantaties worked out in good time so ordering is simple.

[Andy51055]

Nav and I both worked out how many tiles we'd need, though we haven't yet agreed on how large the Hackspace blue H should be. He thinks we should have a small one at the entrance, I think it should be a big one filling most of the electronics/tabled area. Also his version uses 38 tiles while mine uses 99 tiles, so there would be less waste in my version. Here's a diagram of the layout: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/943592/carpettiles.png In it are the 3 different H shapes - which do people prefer?

From that we will need 596 tiles.

I would strongly suggest pale colours in order to maximise the amount of light in the place, even though there will be more noticeable staining/wear on lighter colours. We could use a darker colour/more hardwearing tile in the lobby area so muddy feet are relatively clean by the time the get to the inner sanctum. There should be about 70 tiles in there.
So dark grey/blue in the lobby
Light grey in the main body (so it won't affect any other colour work/ambient lighting effects folks will be working on)
and light blue for the logo
would seem most sensible (and if colour affects price, grey is liable to be cheapest)

So for numbers it will probably be
100 light blue
100 dark grey/blue
400 light grey

[Aidan Dunbar]

I vote for scattered colours, no definitive pattern to allow for easy replacement when tiles are inevitably damaged. The floor is going to be covered in tables, nobody's going to see it, and I think it will look naff.

The floor is going to be pretty much permanent once it is installed. Let's not put any branding into something which cannot be changed without significant financial outlay.

Last I heard the nice section of wooden floor in the lobby was being cleaned, sanded and varnished to provide a more weatherproof entrance.

A

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[Alex Silcock]

I agree with Aidan - it will be best to avoid deliberate designs in the carpet tiles, given that a lot of the floor will be covered up. There's plenty of space on the walls for branding-related artwork - it's in your eyeline unlike the floor, plus you're limited in how accurate you can make designs out of carpet tiles. From a branding perspective, it's better for there be no logo on the floor than a low-res derivative of our actual logo.

If we know roughly where workbenches are going to go then carpet tiles could roughly mark out intended walkways - but if not, a simple version of something like this would be modern looking and easy to maintain if tiles need to be swapped out: http://www.solib.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/floor-carpet-tiles-4.jpg

Last Tuesday Samwise and I were considering having a basic palette of colours to use for hackspace branding - it was centred around our current colour, with a couple of different shades, a pale grey, plus a bright red. I can't find the link right now, but (imo) it looked pretty good. Using tiles that matched the palette would be a flexible compromise between a generic plain floor and one that tries to include the logo.

Alex

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[Andy51055]

I would strongly argue for making the whole thing one colour, ideally pale to maximise light in the space, and would vote for grey. We have all sorts of technology for colouring areas, it seems a real shame to limit ourselves to static colours on the floor.
It would also mean that we could buy a (cheaper) job lot of one colour and not have to work out how many we want of each to give a reasonable balance and have enough of each colour left over for replacements when needed.
Someone's going to clean, sand and varnish the front lobby area, so we won't need to buy tiles for there so that will save us a bit.

Also, are we going to carpet tile the (craft) area at the back or only as far back as the front of the workshop?

[Samwise Wilson]

My votes are: avoid designs and go with andy cook, random tile. - its a floor, whatever we can do to make it easy to last a long time outweighs looking at it.