How to lay linoleum on a concrete floor - features of

Linoleum is one of the most popular flooring today, which is associated with its low cost and good performance properties. In addition, you can lay the material on the floor yourself, the only thing you need to know some of the nuances of work. Therefore, in this article we will consider in detail how to lay linoleum on a concrete floor, so that the finish will be of the highest quality.

Material selection

Before you get acquainted with the process itself, how to lay linoleum on a concrete floor, you should understand the main types of this material. After all, the quality of repair and durability depend on its choice even more than on the installation of the coating.

So, according to the specifications, it is customary to distinguish between three types of linoleum:

• Household - used in residential areas. Perhaps the main requirement for this material is environmental friendliness.
• Commercial - used in offices, shops and other institutions. From this material is required first of all strength and resistance to abrasion. The price for such linoleum is the highest.
• Semi-commercial is an average option, both in quality and cost.

The choice of linoleum for a house or apartment depends largely on where it will be laid. For rooms with high traffic, for example, for the corridor or the hallway is better to use a commercial coating. In the living room or bedroom is quite suitable and household linoleum.

However, regardless of which class the material belongs to, for laying on concrete, it must have a foam layer or a warmed base. This is due to the fact that the concrete itself is very cold.

Laying linoleum

Foundation preparation

Having figured out which linoleum is better to lay on the concrete floor, now we will gradually consider the process of its installation. Like any other finishing work, this procedure begins with the preparation of the foundation. Moreover, it is necessary to approach this stage especially responsibly, since the lifetime of the coating depends on it.

In many ways, the preparation process depends on the quality of the base:

• If, for example, the level drop is no more than 1-2 mm per square meter, you can simply fill the hollows of the concrete and remove the towering areas.
• If the height difference is more significant - 5-7 mm, then the floor is best to pour self-leveling mixture.
• For large irregularities (from a centimeter and more), before you lay linoleum on concrete, you must perform a cement screed.

Tip! If communications are laid in the base, then the concrete will have to be pierced using a perforator, turning it on in hammer mode, with a special tip. If the base is reinforced, then cutting of reinforced concrete with diamond circles is suitable for this purpose.

Making the screed is the most difficult process.

Brief instructions for pouring the floor are as follows:

• The operation begins with the installation of beacons-rails along the room. They should be located in the same horizontal plane. The fixing of the rails is carried out using a gypsum mortar.
• After the gypsum dries, a cement-sand mortar is poured between the slats.
• When the cement reaches the level of the lighthouses, the surface of the concrete floor is leveled with the help of the rule that is carried out along the lighthouses, tightening the excess mortar.

This completes the procedure for completing the screed. Before laying the linoleum on the concrete floor, you need to wait until it dries completely. Otherwise, there will be dampness under the coating, which will spoil the coating.

Tip! If, for some reason, after performing the screed, it was necessary to carry out a pipe, for example, a plumbing or sewage pipe, then in this case diamond drilling of holes in concrete can be performed.

Installation of linoleum

As a rule, linoleum does not lay directly on concrete, but use a substrate under it. Even if the base material is thick and thick, then over time it will still doubt. Therefore, this procedure will not be superfluous.

The options that lay on the concrete floor under the linoleum, there are quite a lot:

• Cork backing;
• Flaxseed;
• Foamed, etc.

Tip! Deciding what to lay under the linoleum on a concrete floor, you can opt for a linen substrate with the addition of jute in a 50/50 ratio. This fabric has good thermal insulation properties and excellent durability.

So, all the preparatory stages are completed, now we lay the linoleum on the concrete floor:

• First you need to decompose the linoleumso that he can “lie down” for some time and level off.
• Next, before laying the linoleum on a concrete floor, you need to lay the substratehaving previously cut it.
• After that, place the cover in the room.. It is desirable that the material goes without joints with a small overlap around the perimeter of the room. If the walls are even, then one or even two sides can push it to the walls, in this case, the process of pruning will be simplified. If the room is large, and two canvases are used to cover it, first of all it is necessary to join the patterns and then align the overlap uniformity with the walls. Sometimes a coating with the same pattern is used in all rooms, in such a situation it is necessary to combine the pattern also in the doorway.
• The next step is to do your own markup of the material around the perimeter of the room.. To do this, starting from any angle, you need to bend the sheet and make marks with a step of 20 - 30 cm along the wall. The marking must be done taking into account the fact that after trimming between the canvas and the wall there should be a gap of 2-3 mm. After that, you need to connect all the marks with one line using the ruler.

• Next is trimming. This is a very important step, so if there is no relevant experience, it is better to cut the linoleum with a slight overlap on the wall and subsequently cut it a little.
• After that, you need to cut corners. At the beginning, for convenience, the angle is cut approximately, and then adjusted.
• This completes the trimming process.. Now the coating must be left in this form for a day so that it finally settles down.
• If the floor space is large and two pieces of linoleum are used, then the joint between them should be eliminated.. To do this, you can apply cold or hot soldering. In the second case, you need a special soldering iron. The simplest option is to spread the base along the seam with bitumen mastic or use double-sided tape.
• The final step is the installation of baseboards, which will press the material around the perimeter.. If the room is large, then along the walls linoleum can be glued the same way as at the joints.

Note! All work on the laying of linoleum is allowed to be performed at a room temperature of more than 15-18 degrees Celsius. Otherwise, the material will lose elasticity and become brittle.

This completes the installation process.

Conclusion

Having understood how to lay linoleum correctly on a concrete floor, it will not be difficult to perform this procedure even without the experience of such work. The only thing is necessary to observe a certain sequence of work and not to violate the technology.

From the video in this article, you can get additional information regarding the installation of linoleum on a concrete base.