Contents
Repair and insulation of the floor. Video
If you decide to make repairs in an apartment or a private house of an old building, take this opportunity to insulate the floors and make your home more cozy and comfortable. Insulating floors will not require large material costs, but the effect of this will avoid unnecessary heat losses and significantly save money, especially if an autonomous system is used to heat the house.
Repair and insulation of wooden floors
If you are repairing floors on the first floor of a private house or apartment, especially if there is a basement downstairs, insulation will have to be done without fail. It is done before installing the log, after all the elements of the subfloor are fixed. In this case, it is necessary to provide not only thermal insulation of the floors, but also their waterproofing and vapor barrier using special film materials. This will protect the insulation material from getting wet in case of penetration of moist air and the subsequent rotting of the wood.
The material that you will use for floor insulation should be selected taking into account the climatic conditions of the area where you live. As a heater, you can use: – Styrofoam; – Styrofoam; – Penoizol; – Ecowool or mineral wool in slabs or in rolls.
Most often, for this purpose, mineral wool is chosen, which can be laid between the lags in layers of the required thickness. The free space between the logs can also be insulated by covering it with expanded clay. When laying roll and sheet material, it is important not to leave gaps and voids, completely blocking the access of cold air from the basement.
It is important that the upper boards of the wooden floor do not touch the insulation and an air gap remains between them and the insulation
Repair and insulation of finished concrete floor
If the concrete floor is already ready and it is not possible to raise its height by 3–10 cm, for insulation between it and the floor covering, you can lay a thin heat-insulating membrane, covered with a layer of foil from below or without it. On the surface of the screed, such an insulating film is mounted using a special glue that is sold with it. Do not forget that before laying the thermal insulation film on a dry leveled surface of the concrete floor, lay the waterproofing.
In the case when you have chosen laminate as your flooring, in the same store you can buy polyurethane foam, which can have different thicknesses and is sold in rolls. It can be laid in one or more layers. On top of such insulation, you can also mount a floor covering made of parquet boards or ordinary linoleum with a lower insulating layer.
The thermal insulation properties of a parquet board are higher than that of a laminate made from pressed paper
Repair and insulation of a new concrete floor
In the case when the repair involves dismantling the old concrete floor and pouring a new concrete floor, you will have much more options for warming it. Before laying the screed, between it and the floor slabs, you can make a bed of expanded clay or lay a sheet of insulation such as stone wool or dense foam. It differs from the usual one in color and fine-grained structure. Sometimes, to enhance the effect, expanded clay is poured into concrete when the screed is being made.
Repair and floor insulation
If you will be pouring new floors, it makes sense to think about installing a “warm floor” system, especially when you have a centralized hot water supply in your apartment or gas is supplied to a private house. Installation of water heat-insulated floors made of solid metal-plastic pipes, laid with a snake, although it will require 7–8 cm in height, will allow you to significantly save in their operation compared to electric heat-insulated floors. On the other hand, electric mats or even a self-regulating cable laid in loops will not take up much height space. The “warm floor” system is the most comfortable in terms of optimal distribution of warm air flows in the room – in this case your feet will always be warm, which cannot be achieved with radiators, floor or ceiling heaters, since they do not heat the floor surface. When choosing underfloor heating, you should also take into account that electric underfloor heating can be installed and connected only after the concrete screed has completely hardened, but this condition is not necessary for a water floor.
Another way to insulate a concrete floor is to use special gypsum fiber boards. They provide not only good thermal insulation, but also inexpensive, easy to install – such floors can be assembled in one day. On a flat surface of such a floor, without preliminary processing and preparation, you can immediately lay any floor covering: carpet, linoleum, laminate or parquet.
An important detail that you should consider when making floor insulation is the change in the linear dimensions of materials when heated. To compensate for this physical phenomenon, it is necessary to lay a heat-insulating element with a thickness of about 1 cm between the walls and the floor layer around the entire perimeter of the premises in the house or apartment.In this capacity, you can use a foam or membrane, which will shrink when the floor is heated, which will exclude the possibility of deformation and destruction of materials walls and floors.