How to make the floor on the loggia itself
The floors on most modern loggias, as a rule, have a not very attractive appearance, since builders most often cover them with ordinary linoleum, and sometimes they can even manage with a single screed. On the other hand, many owners of large loggias dream of giving this room a rather cozy, habitable look, allowing it to be used as a living area with a normal flooring, and are considering how to make a floor on the loggia with their own hands.
Possible flooring options
Before you make the floor on the loggia, you need to familiarize yourself with the possible ways to solve the problem. As a rule, in most cases the following most common options are considered:
- preparation of cement screed with expanded clay or expanded polystyrene insulation, subsequently covered with ceramic tiles, laminate or linoleum;
- arrangement of a wooden floor, laid on logs with warming with mineral wool or polystyrene foam plates;
- making the so-called floor heating.
Foundation preparation
Regardless of the method of arrangement of the flooring chosen by you, you should definitely worry about preparing a reliable base for it. To do this, you first need to remove the old linoleum, and then try to eliminate the defects of the floor.
To this end, the debris-free rough floor is first leveled with one of the known methods (as needed), and then primed. In cases where wooden floors are being prepared, for example, pre-priming of the concrete slab helps prevent the destruction of its upper layer, and when pouring a screed with insulation, it creates conditions for its reliable adhesion to the subfloor.
Next, we look at each of the above methods of preparing the floor in more detail.
Cement strainer
When preparing a leveling coating, which is subsequently closed with ceramic tiles, linoleum or laminate, the most important thing is to determine the type of screed (dry or semi-dry type) suitable for each specific case. In addition, you will definitely have to master the technique of manufacturing specialized beacons installed on a primed rough base according to the following scheme:
- When using a dry screed, the light profiles are first exposed using a level and then fixed on the base with thick cement mortar.
- When the floor is being warmed, the protective material used is laid down (or filled up) immediately before the installation of the beacons, which greatly facilitates the installation of the latter.
- It will be possible to move on to the screed filling only after the installed lighthouses fully grasp.
Recall that the classic screed is made in the form of sand-cement mortar, in which one part of cement grade 400, for example, has 3-4 parts of sand.
The semi-dry screed differs from the classical amount of water added when it is mixed (it will need half the amount); at the same time, before adding a liquid, the dry mixture is thoroughly mixed to a state that resembles in its structure snow squeezed in a palm.
When pouring, a semi-dry mixture can be laid on a rough base with a conventional shovel followed by tamping, after which the excess composition is tightened by the rule directly on the beacons (just as when preparing a conventional tie). In both cases, the irregularities formed during pouring are filled with a diluted mixture and gently rubbed with a special grater.
How to make a dry screed on the loggia, you can see in the video:
Wooden flooring
Arrangement of a plank floor with insulation involves the use of special logs, lined directly along the primed concrete base and raising the loggia to a height that provides the convenience of laying insulation.
In this case, the lags are located along the longitudinal line of the room and are set strictly level with fastening on the concrete base or without fixing on it (on a perfectly aligned substrate, their fixation is not at all necessary). After installation, the lags formed between them are filled with insulation material, after which the boards are laid with their OSB, laminate or linoleum.
Note that in the case of the use of coating from OSB, it is not necessary to fit the boards tightly. And when arranging a clean plank floor (uncoated), only those boards should be fixed, which are located along the edges of the loggia; while all the other floorboards are placed between them with a little tightness.
Warm floor
And finally, the so-called warm floor is mounted on the loggia according to the classical scheme, according to which, first, a leveling screed is applied on the prepared base, then a heating system laid with insulation is placed on it. At the final stage of work, this entire structure is poured with another layer of a screed with a filler of special plasticizers.
Video
And this is how the warm floor is done on the loggia: