# leveling a concrete floor



## Dr.Faustus (Feb 21, 2012)

i have a medium sized laundry room with a concrete floor. the floor is sloped. i'd like to level it out and tile before our new washer comes tuesday.

it is sloped quite a bit, it seems like it always has been and has not changed since we bought the house. the left side of the room is maybe 1 1/4 inch below the right side of the room.

my question is should i do this using regular concrete on top of the old concrete or do i have to go with that stupidly expensive self leveling mortar?

i've used concrete before, i can make a level pad out of it and have also used it to set posts. 

or should i do both? use concrete to get most of the way level and then use the self leveling to finish it off?

thanks for any help


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## midwestcoast (Feb 21, 2012)

Is the floor sloped evenly (flat, but not level)? Is it sloping towards a floor drain?  That can be a very useful feature in a laundry room & you may want to keep that slope & lay tiles on the flat, but not level concrete.
If you level it I would recommend NOT using self leveling compound for that. You likely won't correct that much varience in a single coat & the cost will be very high.  I'd use cheaper mix to level it, then some self-leveling IF needed to finish it off.  You need to ensure the leveling coat bonds to the existing concrete and that it can be poured in thin coats without breaking-up.


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## Dr.Faustus (Feb 21, 2012)

its a flat floor but just not level.  the surface is tile ready if i didnt mind the slope. theres no drain and it slopes towards a wall. i dont mind it terribly being its only a laundry room but the washer hates it.

i could go the easy route and tile it as is and use the adjustable feet of the new washer to compensate. just remembered those leveling feet. the old washer was a nightmare that came with the house. the feet were either removed or never installed.


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## CTguy9230 (Feb 22, 2012)

an 1 1/4 pitch seems like an awful lot to me in a small laundry room

i think id wanna level it up a little bit before i tiled it


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## Dr.Faustus (Feb 22, 2012)

i want to as well. the problem is how? self leveling compound isnt made for such a pitch and all of the concrete products i've seen require a 2" min slab thickness. just for kicks i read the thinset bag and its min thickness is 1/4 inch. can i level the floor with thinset, let it dry then trowel on some more and lay tile? will it work? 

my other options are to tile as is, rip up slab and start over (not gonna happen), frame  out a level floor on top of the slab with 2x4's/plywood/durarock/tile (not crazy about it)


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## Dune (Feb 22, 2012)

Thinset.


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## semipro (Feb 22, 2012)

Tough one.  
How about building a rectangular box that your washer and dryer can sit on?  You can install levelers on it and you'd end up with an elevated and level platform.  I guess you could build it out of concrete instead of wood if you wanted.  
I've been considering doing this anyway just to raise our washer and dryer up to a more useable height.  
If there's no drain in the room maybe you could add one while doing this.
Twice now we've been glad to have drains under our washer in two different houses.


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## mbcijim (Feb 22, 2012)

You could rip a bunch of 2x4's and build a new floor?  Would especially work well if you wouldn't mind a 1" step at the door.  I've done that and it worked pretty well.


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## Highbeam (Feb 22, 2012)

I converted a garage to a living space and poured concrete inside the home to make the space level instead of the typical slope to the door. You will need to pour a lot of concrete, enough to raise the thinnest part of the pour up to the minimum allowable thickness. Now since you are tiling this it can be a bit ugly but it must be stable to prevent cracks in your tile. 

In your situation, I would likely put together a wood form and pour a level platform for the washer. If that's no good then consider removing the concrete in the room and repouring. If you can live with a step as you enter the room, then you could add insulating foam and pour a level (wedge shape) slab.


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## midwestcoast (Feb 22, 2012)

I wouldn't use thinset.  It's just not made for this & I bet you'd have problems.  How about an old-fashioned mortar bed? That is how tile was installed before thinsets were invented & it is meant to create a thicker bed. You would need to lay down a bonding agent (I think they just use portland cement), then build your mortar bed & level it.  Labor intensive, but pretty do-able for a small space.  If you go with smaller tile you can get away with slight imperfections in the bed, otherwise you might need a thin layer of self-leveling compound on top.
I've never done that, just throwin' it out there.


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## Dr.Faustus (Feb 23, 2012)

on the bright side, the laundry room in question is sunken. i can raise the floor up a whole lot before i'd have to step up. its history.... my dining room and laundry room used to be an attached garage on the side of the ranch style home. years before i bought it, it was converted to a dining room, laundry room and stairs to get into the basement without going outside. if i look through an access panel under my dining room i can see the old slab for the garage floor and the old brick stairs that gave access from the kitchen to the old garage. they added a detached 2 car garage during the process.

so now, the dining room is level with the rest of the house, the slab is under it. where the dining room ends is where the laundry room begins. the floor of the laundry room is the rear 1/4 of the old garage slab. wild guess is that the floor slopes like that to a drain that used to be in the middle of the garage but is now under a dining room.

im going to use concrete and build so that the min thickness is 2" like its says. cant do it by tuesday though, so i'll have to put it off till my spring vacation


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## Dune (Feb 23, 2012)

There are also fiberglass strengthers which can be mixed in for reduced thickness needs.


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## ironpony (Feb 23, 2012)

Dr.Faustus said:
			
		

> on the bright side, the laundry room in question is sunken. i can raise the floor up a whole lot before i'd have to step up. its history.... my dining room and laundry room used to be an attached garage on the side of the ranch style home. years before i bought it, it was converted to a dining room, laundry room and stairs to get into the basement without going outside. if i look through an access panel under my dining room i can see the old slab for the garage floor and the old brick stairs that gave access from the kitchen to the old garage. they added a detached 2 car garage during the process.
> 
> so now, the dining room is level with the rest of the house, the slab is under it. where the dining room ends is where the laundry room begins. the floor of the laundry room is the rear 1/4 of the old garage slab. wild guess is that the floor slopes like that to a drain that used to be in the middle of the garage but is now under a dining room.
> 
> im going to use concrete and build so that the min thickness is 2" like its says. cant do it by tuesday though, so i'll have to put it off till my spring vacation




based on this explanation
raise the floor levelup  to the dining room,  using wood floor joists
1) no step
2) thermal break from cold slab


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## Highbeam (Feb 23, 2012)

Okay much easier. I had the goofy step from original floor grade down to sloped garage grade. To make these even I added a layer of plastic and then anywhere from zero to two inches of foam to the floor maintaining three inches of concrete thickness. Now around the edges I had to prevent the concrete from running into the wall cavity so I "skirted" the room with 2" foam. Pouring concrete inside is really easy. The foam makes the floors stay pretty darn warm. The ceiling was the same height across the whole place so it is now hard to tell that it used to be a garage.


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## richg (Feb 24, 2012)

I had two sections of floor that were terribly off-level. I went the expensive route of having gypcrete pumped in. It is level as a pool table, but I would not trust it for a laundry room in case of a washer spill or leak.


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## Highbeam (Feb 24, 2012)

Are you concerned that the gypcrete (lightweight concrete) would abosrb the water and swell?


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## richg (Feb 24, 2012)

Highbeam said:
			
		

> Are you concerned that the gypcrete (lightweight concrete) would abosrb the water and swell?



Yes, Gypcrete is not the same as concrete....it contains gypsum, the same stuff in sheetrock. The floors I had leveled were not subject to water exposure so I had no worries there, but in laundry room, well, I'd think twice. There are other leveling compounds that are not gypsum based and perhaps that's worth a look.


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## Highbeam (Feb 25, 2012)

I know gypcrete is not the same as concrete but I also know that chemically they are not that much different. I've been in houses that had wooden subfloors with radiant heat tubing stapled to the floor and then 2-3" of gypcrete poured over all of this. I hope they know about the water sensitivity.


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## UMainah (Feb 26, 2012)

You could hire someone who does slabjacking. No idea what the cost is, but I've seen it done and it's very slick. They pretty much just strategically drill a whole in the slab and pump in some type of grout until the slab is raised to where it needs to be.


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## Dr.Faustus (Mar 2, 2012)

well the washer came, but didnt have time or money to level off the floor. the good news is the washer manual says its leveling feet can compensate for a slope no greater than 1.5 inches across the legnth of the washer. so i was able to get it perfectly level. i decided to wait to tile until i have the time and money to do the floor the right way. this will probably happen when the dryer breaks. my luck that will be tomorrow.

for the floor i found a waste piece of indoor outdoor green (grassy looking) carpet that was on clearance. it happened to be just the right size. so the room looks a lot nicer now and more importantly the washer works without banging all around like some possessed monster.

by the way before all this started it had old self stick vinyl tile that was utterly disgusting. i took the whole floor up in a few minutes. the suction from my shop vac was stronger than the tiles bond to the floor. how sad.

anyway thanks for all your help and i will definately use it when i get this under way.


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