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*Self-leveling Concrete*

A customer hired us to install a tile floor in his foyer. There had previously been a slate floor that he tried to get up by himself unsuccessfully. What he had managed to get up left the cement slab a real mess, very uneven and out of level.

If you have a floor with minor humps and valleys that need to be leveled. There are specially designed products that can be poured onto the floor to fill in the low spots with little or no spreading by hand.

The concrete slab is made of Portland cement, gravel and water. It's commonly used for floors, walls and structural components. While this material is long lasting and durable, it can sustain some damage over time due to environmental conditions and impacts from falling objects. In addition, inexperienced installers can cause concrete to be uneven and produce poor results. Fortunately, all of these problems can be addressed with the use of self-leveling concrete, a liquid topping layer that hardens to cover the entire floor surface.
A self leveling concrete overlay can be used to resurface a concrete slab. The most common use is to fix problematic slabs. Slabs with cracks or slabs that have high and low spots can be fixed with self leveling concrete overlays.

As an example, wood flooring requires a very flat surface. So a slab that has high and low spots must be fixed before the flooring can be laid. In many cases a self leveling overlay is the easiest solution.
We mixed up a few bags following the instructions on the bags and float it onto the damaged surface making sure not to add too much and put a hump in the floor.

Unless you plan to cover a slab with carpet or some other flooring system, a self leveling overlay isn't really a do-it-yourself project. The material usually sets up rather quickly and you need experience to be able to keep up with it. The next day we were able to start laying the tile.

For the most part, a self leveling concrete overlay is not used as the final finish, but rather covered up with another type of flooring.

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