Help finishing LVP install

[Jen81407]

Long story short, I had a good contractor who hit some rough times and turned into an awful contractor. Tile and carpet were removed from concrete slab and he poured self leveling cement over parts of the area that previously had tile and a lot of big holes after the tile demo. My dad and I want to finish the job ourselves since no other good flooring company has availability for at least a couple weeks.

I scrapped up any bumps on the self level now that it’s dry and I would like some advice on how to finish the floor prep for LVP. Specifically, the best way to smooth out the transition between where he poured the cement and what didn’t (see pictures) and then how to fill some of the remaining areas that are not flat.

Thanks!

 

[Mark Brown]

Eeeek...
If that is your finished "leveler" then i think Self Leveling your floor is likely where you should start.
To lay Floating Plank, your floor needs to be Flat and Smooth, i am fairly sure that is not what i am looking at.
First step is to determine what areas that remain are not within tolerance for your flooring, this is typically anything over 3/16 in a 10 foot span and can be as little as 1/8 in the same. Judging on what i am seeing in those two photos i would bet a lot of money that nothing that was leveled is within that tolerance, but maybe i am just seeing the worst.
After determining what parts are bad, what parts are high and what parts are low, it would be much easier to offer advice on how to repair it. As it is now, i would not recommend just feathering out those small areas before you determine what everything looks like topographically

 

[Jen81407]

Thanks for the reply, Mark. The two areas I’m highlighting are definitely the worst areas.

My LVP says 1/8” within 6’. Is there a best practice on how to do this overall topographical check or just take a 6’level and move across the floor?

I’m attaching a photo of a more general view of the floor that the self leveler was poured on as well as the adjacent area that was previously carpet and wasn’t as damaged during demo.

 

[Mark Brown]

So you are going to want to get the longest flattest thing you can... Metal Box screed being the best option, we move on from there to lets say a 5/8 piece of 5" flat stock base board only because it is readily available and cheap. Failing either of those options, and perhaps as well, get a piece of string and string it across the room from various places while maintaining a single point of origin, you will get a good picture of what is going on. Drag that thing around your floor, you will see it is anything but flat.
Looking at your second picture, judging by your hung drywall I am willing to bet you have a lot of work to do to get that floor to a level that would be considered flat enough to lay lvp on, but that is just me.
If what i see is what i think i see, i am willing to also bet that you are going to want to use a SLC to correct it. What has been done to date from the pictures is done very poorly and was grossly over watered. Do you happen to know if they primed the concrete before using SLC? I do not see any prime lines, but pictures can be deceiving.
I do not mean to be a barer of bad news/harbinger of doom.... but i think you are in for a lot of work.

 

[Mark Brown]

So it is me again.... Here is an industry secret that no one wants you to know except everyone in the industry who installs for a living, but you dont meet us until it is too late....
Floating Vinyl plank needs the most stringent conditions for flat out of any and all floor coverings that exist on the market today. While most if not all of them require 3/16 in 10' as a spec it is mostly a useless thing to say and has no relevance to the real world until it comes to click plank. Those things are made in such a fashion that there is not enough meat on the proverbial bone so to speak in terms of a locking mechanism to allow for much stress caused by undulation in the substrate. If you floor is not flat, then it is not flat. We can come up with all kinds of terms and measurements and the like, but flat means flat.
Now for the part that is the most interesting... they tell you it is DIY friendly and can be laid over this thing and that thing and oh dont worry it comes with an attached pad that will correct "minor" subfloor imperfections, WTF does that mean? Minor is not an empirical measurement. There is only one pad that i have ever seen in my whole life that offered a numerical representation of what "minor" imperfections meant to them, wanna know what it is <0.6mm thats right less than 3/128th of an inch or 0.0236. See the issue here? A flooring that is sold as easy requires so much in the way of subfloor preparation as to make it impractical at best and largely impossible typically to obtain by John Q. Homeowner, or Suzy Q or their Non-binary pansexual offspring s%tty$x, we are inclusive

 

[Jen81407]

Hi Mark, I appreciate your thorough explanation. We do have a 16’ baseboard to use to check on the leveling. My dad was originally coming up to install baseboards and is now stuck helping me with this mess now ;(

Now that you say it was over watered it makes a lot of sense when I saw how it looked a little more “puddle” like than I expected when he poured it. He did “patch” it Monday and then poured the SLC Tuesday. Here’s the patch pics from previous day.

 

[Mark Brown]

And then put slc on that>>?
Oh well, what is done is done. Kudos to whoever covered the cold air return, thats a good move. It isn't all bad.

Tell you what, you go figure out how not flat it all is and we can come up with some better ideas. For the record, there are 3 viable options and typically they are mostly all required. Grinding the concrete, Patching the concrete or using SLC. None of those are simple by design and usually will be used in unison. It is rather obvious which options are used for what but the knowing where is the entirety of the battle.

Looking at that patch work, it was entirely a waste of time and just provides another layer to fail with SLC on top of it. I have never understood why anyone would do this.

 

[highup]

It doesn't look like SLC because there's trowel marks in it. SLC is thin and is poured out like thick water. You don't trowel SLC except to push it around and guide it into position. I can see it taking a dozen 50 lb bags of SLC to get that floor in shape.
There are formulas to determine how many bags of SLC are required for whatever depth you think you will need.
SLC will flow in places that you don't want to go, like under wall, into floor vents and even cracks in the floor.
So to pour SLC you need to caulk the perimeter of the floor and any cracks in the floor that you don't want the SLC to flow down into. Yes it's that thin. There are videos out there to show how it's done.
Because of the trowel marks it looks more like regular floor filler that was over watered and under mixed.

 

[highup]

It would be worth trying to get one of those other floor companies in there to at least look at the floor and give you their opinion of what should be done to fix it.
If it's so messed up that the entire floor needs to have self-leveler applied, you could add up the square footage of floor and have that number available. just divide each room and the hallway up into rectangles and squares. A 10x10 room is 100 ft is a 3-ft x 10 ft hallway is 30 ft.
It might not need to be done to such an extreme, I got a good flooring company could tell you what needs to be done by seeing it in person.
If you're going to be installing a click lock type floor all of that base needs to come off so you can continue removing base in the meantime.

 

[Mark Brown]

It doesn't look like SLC because there's trowel marks in it

He did “patch” it Monday and then poured the SLC Tuesday. Here’s the patch pics from previous day

For clarity sake and so as not to confuse the thread

 

[highup]

I often need clarity.

 

[Incognito]

I think a floor sander would tear alot of that slag off and greatly improve the prospects. But that requires a professional rig with dust control.

 

[highup]

I think a floor sander would tear alot of that slag off and greatly improve the prospects. But that requires a professional rig with dust control.

Just open the windows and put a fan in the doorway.

 

[Mark Brown]

Just open the windows and put a fan in the doorway.

Don't forget to take out the screen... that way no one will know

 

[highup]

You must be a hoot to work around.

 

[Mark Brown]

I have fun man, thats the name of the game. I dont want to get up everyday and be miserable for 12 hours while i am at work. That is for when i get home!!

 

[Jen81407]

Hey everyone, so today we went around the space checking the level and there are only two bad areas. One has a high spot that we tried grinding, with little success (angle grinder just didn’t seem to cut it). The other has a low spot which we filled with self leveler. The low spot is a lot better, but still a little low. We were thinking of trying to chisel the high spot (it’s a really small area) and then self level the low spot again and any damage from chiseling. Thoughts on this plan of attack?

One question of the area we self leveled... it seemed a little “grittier” than the self level the flooring guy originally poured. Has more of the texture of a sidewalk than smooth to touch. Followed the mixing instructions exactly and it seems to have dried pretty strong, so not sure if we did something wrong or not. I do think we were a bit conservative with pouring since we were new to the process.

Oh and we did finish taking off the baseboards while we waited for the leveler to dry...

P.S. My floor guy never took off my screens and the ones he had open are filthy!

 

[highup]

I have fun man, thats the name of the game. I dont want to get up everyday and be miserable for 12 hours while i am at work. That is for when i get home!!

I couldn't wake up being miserable for 5 hours a day either. Damn, I feel like we're brothers.

 

[Mark Brown]

Might i ask what product you were using?
Leveler for floor coverings is designed to be smooth, but who know in this wacky world

 

[Incognito]

Just open the windows and put a fan in the doorway.

***************************
If those knucklheads watered down the patch and you're trying to sand off thin set and bad floor patch slag NORMALLY with a 12 grit pad there would be a horrendous shitstorm of dust that isn't something that I can imagine doing in anyone's home absent a pro set-up. Sure, you could direct the majority out doors or windows but there's going to be an awful mess left behind unless you completely protected the space with plastic from wall to ceiling.

It might be worth the cost of plastic, blue and duct tape come to think of it when you scan the list of alternatives. 6 mil plastic sheeting, Half mask respirator, HEAVY, commercial floor sander and a strong fan blowing out the door. Yeah, it may actually be the best solution-------for STARTERS

You're still going to need to float/screed/self-level/skimcoat. But taking down those stalagmites is almost always the necessary and most efficient step. My thoughts are the sander can sometimes buzz crap off flatISH, compared to hand held grinding.

Hey everyone, so today we went around the space checking the level and there are only two bad areas. One has a high spot that we tried grinding, with little success (angle grinder just didn’t seem to cut it). The other has a low spot which we filled with self leveler. The low spot is a lot better, but still a little low. We were thinking of trying to chisel the high spot (it’s a really small area) and then self level the low spot again and any damage from chiseling. Thoughts on this plan of attack?

One question of the area we self leveled... it seemed a little “grittier” than the self level the flooring guy originally poured. Has more of the texture of a sidewalk than smooth to touch. Followed the mixing instructions exactly and it seems to have dried pretty strong, so not sure if we did something wrong or not. I do think we were a bit conservative with pouring since we were new to the process.

Oh and we did finish taking off the baseboards while we waited for the leveler to dry...

P.S. My floor guy never took off my screens and the ones he had open are filthy!

**********************************
try a bushing hammer anywhere's you're not able to reasonably grind.

The type and size of bushing hammer of course depends on the scale of work required. We can't know that by non-specific adjectives. It's actually a very specific number you can ballpark to get an idea of just how much concrete you need to remove. You would probably want to rent a chipping hammer with the bushing hammer attachment.

https://www.google.com/search?q=bus...VHo54KHYO8Cn4Q_AUoAnoECAEQBA&biw=1088&bih=484