Screed floor on lighthouses. Installation of beacons for floor screed

When building a private house or overhauling an apartment, a very important step is the floor screed, which is designed to level the surface before the finish coat.

Floor screed on lighthouses

The process of installing the beacon system in preparation for leveling the floor surface is quite complex and extremely responsible, requiring maximum accuracy, as well as a strict sequence of actions.

The level of quality of the future surface, and, consequently, the operational characteristics and appearance of the planned decorative floor coverings depends on how correctly the beacons are installed under the floor screed.

What role is assigned to beacons in the construction process?

With whatever diligence the general construction work was carried out, it is almost impossible to ensure that the surface of the slabs is ideal, and they themselves would have a strictly horizontal arrangement. There is always a slight difference in height. In addition, it is often required to perform a certain level of waterproofing, warming or installation of heating systems "warm floors". In any case, "clean" surfaces, on which the decorative coatings themselves will be covered, become somewhat higher in the level.

The very procedure of leveling the floors by the method of pouring (or filling) screeds requires a separate detailed consideration - there are a lot of different nuances, from the preparation of the surface of the base, ending with the choice of the type and the required proportion of the solution.

But how can you ensure that the surfaces created are perfectly horizontal? In order to answer this question correctly, we need to get better acquainted with the purpose of the lighthouse system.

At its core, the floor screed by the beacons is nothing more than a set of guides that are installed on one, strictly verified level. They serve as a good reference point for a floor-filling worker, and an indispensable technological device that greatly simplifies this responsible and time-consuming process.

General principles for installing beacons

In order to ensure the most qualitative installation of beacons for floor screeding, it is very important to observe the two most important conditions:

1. Accurate beating of zero level.
2. Strict adherence to the required distance between the guides.

Zero level

If you want to give the filler screed a really high degree of strength, in order to extend the service life as much as possible, its thickness in the narrowest sections should be made no more than thirty millimeters, since this is the ideal value for zero level filling.

Some of the species (for example, dry screed floors on lighthouses) require a much thicker layer - from fifty millimeters.

In the corners, which seem too high visually, marks are made on the walls at a distance, say, fifty centimeters from the level of the floor.

With the help of hydro levels or building levels-rulers, these marks should be moved along the entire perimeter of the wall of the room. This process can be greatly simplified and accelerated if there is a high-quality laser level.

From this strictly horizontal line, and should measure the distance to the floor surface on each of the sections of the wall of the room, recording the result. The place where this distance is minimal, should be taken as the highest point of the floor.

At the detected point, it is necessary to make a mark above the floor surface by approximately thirty millimeters (for the maximum thickness of the screed). From it, as in the first case, it is necessary to draw a strictly horizontal line along the entire perimeter of the wall. This line will be the "zero" baseline.

In order to ensure that everything was done correctly, you need to check the levels of the floors in the center of the room - there are cases that there it is higher than the wall.

A check is made in a number of places using cords stretched along the base lines. If the level in the center of the room is higher, or if the thickness of the screed to be filled is too small, the zero line should be shifted upwards to the required distance.

How to correctly plan the direction of lighthouses, as well as the distance between them?

As a rule, the line of the lighthouse is laid along the premises, in the direction of the forthcoming filling of the screeds.

From the wall, the first and second parallel guides should be located at a distance of not more than three hundred and a half millimeters from each other, otherwise a wall failure may form on the surface.

The remaining beacons should be distributed evenly, so that the distance between two adjacent guides is approximately 255 to 355 millimeters shorter than the length of the rule available.

Some of the technologies of the screed device require a fairly frequent placement of the lighthouse. For example, to fall asleep dry screeds need about eight guides, the width of which should exceed the width of the room.

After the floor screed on the lighthouses is made, it is necessary to level the surface.

Beacon Species

In order to be installed lighthouses for floor screed, use special metal profiles or devices, as well as some improvised materials.

The choice of installation method will mainly depend on the type of filler or filler.

Metallic profile

As a guide, when beacons are installed for floor screeding (photo), the metal profile is mainly used.

At the device of a coupler with the minimum thickness in a small premise for the given purpose the plaster metal profile can quite approach.

Nevertheless, despite its so-called "stiffening rib", it does not have a particularly high level of strength, and with a large volume of the poured solution, it can not cope with such pressure, due to which it begins to deform - to spring or flex.

As a very successful alternative, it is often used to set up beacons for screeding the floor from a metal U-shaped profile for gypsum board. It can be a narrow ceiling, with the height of the side shelf at twenty-seven and a half millimeters and the width of the bridge at twenty-eight and a half millimeters, or wide-twenty-seven and a half by sixty-seven and a half millimeters.

A special advantage of this approach is that thanks to it, very convenient guides are created, which are necessary for the rules to move on them when pouring.

In the process of using a heavy solution, there is always room for the two profiles to be folded into one (with a rectangular section), thereby adding strength to it.

System "warm floor"

The lighthouse for the screed of the warm floor and the pouring of the mortar itself requires special attention, since the heated surface is subjected to both physical stresses and thermal expansion due to heating and cooling.

The thickness of the screed for the heating cable is recommended to be 3-5 cm. If it is less than 3 cm, it can simply be "torn" due to the temperature expansion. If the layer is more than 5 cm, the cable may not be able to cope with the heating, and the temperature on the floor surface can not match the one set on the regulator. The optimum thickness of the screed on the separation layer is at least 3 cm.