PERFECT PERFORMANCE AGAINST THE CLOCK
How can a busy contractor achieve a smooth subfloor that’s ready to receive a floorcovering in a single day?
F.Ball and Co. explains.
For many flooring installations, a smooth subfloor surface on which to install floorcoverings can be achieved using a general purpose smoothing underlayment. Typically, it will be applied after the subfloor has been cleaned, any adhesive residues removed and a waterproof surface membrane installed (if required). Once applied, they will be left to set and will be ready to receive a floorcovering the following day or even the day after.
However, for many installations, especially refurbishments, time is often the most pressing issue and waiting a day or two before a floorcovering can be installed is not practical. Also for a contractor, who has to travel some distance to site, the benefits of being able to complete their work in a single day are obvious.
For this reason, leading manufacturers have developed specialist smoothing underlayments that deliver substantial time savings, while maintaining the performance criteria that are required of industry-leading products.
FASTTRACK The ultimate ‘fasttrack’ smoothing underlayments available, such as F. Ball’s Stopgap Fast-Track 30, can be applied to a subfloor and ready to receive a floor covering from just 45 minutes. Importantly, an effective working time of between 10–15 minutes ensures that the underlayment can be applied easily and evenly across the floor area, benefiting from the product’s self- levelling properties.
MINIMUM PREPARATION, MAXIMUM
PERFORMANCE Before installing a smoothing underlayment, the fundamental rule has
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always been to ensure that the subfloor is clean, dry and free from adhesive residues left behind when the previous floorcovering was removed. Normally, this would have to be done using mechanical means, such as grinding or scabbling, which is time consuming and adds a further process to the preparation phase of a project.
To avoid this preparation step, contractors can now utilise smoothing underlayments, such as Stopgap 1200 Pro, which can be applied over existing adhesive residues (including bitumen and carpet tile tackifiers), without the need for priming.
The underlayment is also suitable for application over damp, clean, uneven concrete and sand:cement screeds, prior to the application of a waterproof surface membrane.
PUMP UP THE VOLUME When applying a smoothing underlayment over large floor areas, time-saving technology can still deliver fast-track benefits.
For example, F. Ball’s Stopgap 300 HD is a fast-drying, self-levelling smoothing underlayment suitable for use in light or heavy duty areas. While it can be trowel applied over smaller areas, for large floor areas it can be pumped applied up to 1,500m2
per day to a thickness of
up to 20mm, significantly reducing the application time.
With a walk on time of 90 minutes, the smoothing underlayment will be ready to receive a floor covering is as little as six hours for absorbent surfaces and 12 hours for non-absorbent surfaces. For large projects, this would typically mean the underlayment is installed over the course of a day and a floorcovering installed the following day.
THE NEXT LEVEL For situations where a floor level has to be built up quickly (and economically), deep base compounds, such as Stopgap 600 Base, offer a faster solution than installing a sand: cement screed or using multiple layers of a general purpose smoothing underlayment. A sand:cement screed typically dries at a rate of 1mm per day, so a 50mm depth would take a full 50 days to dry properly.
With Stopgap 600 floor levels up to 50mm can be built up in a single application. The base compound is walk- on hard from 90 mins and can then be capped with an appropriate smoothing underlayment after 3 hours, which will be ready to receive a new floorcovering from between 4 - 12 hours (depending on the underlayment selected). Stopgap 600 can also be pump applied for building up floors over large areas.
www.f-ball.co.uk LEVELLING COMPOUNDS | 37
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