We’ve got a gas leak which we are trying to pin down, it’s going to result in us having to lift floors in 3 rooms, rip out a bathroom and destroy the hall floor. The whole downstairs is oak flooring , with runs right through hall to rooms which now have no floor. Ignoring insurance who don’t cover much how much would a ballpark be to replace circa 40m2 of oak flooring ?! Not having a great time with this as we’ve no heating and small children plus great big holes to access the floor space !

Laying yourself? 30per sqm? Laying at say 20per
Sqm

We’re looking at this for our shiny new extension

Solid oak flooring is about £30-45/sqm.

Fitting, our builders have quoted about £35/sqm (London prices)

I’ve just laid 50m sq of engineered oak, cost in total was about £3200. £42 per sq m for the flooring itself, the rest was fitting and foam underlay.

This was 20mm thick overall,comprising of 6mm of oak, 14mm of mdf, fairly wide planks, so reasonably high quality.

Contact deadly Darcy. He’s Bristol but did my floor (parquet) in London so does travel. Super super guy. If he doesn’t chip in on me and I’ll give you his email.

just laid 22sqm of reasonable quality (Kahrs) engineered oak and sonifloor gold underlay.
flooring £1000,
trims/threshold strips £150
mate with all the cutting tools and his labour for a day £200
self levelling compound for a few dips /bumps £35

you can get cheaper oak but it will be thinner and not such a range of colours.

By the way, the event that lead me to replacing 50 sq m of floor was a water leak under the kitchen floor. A fair amount of money later and the water leak is fixed (worlds most expensive domestic water leak) – and I have a new kitchen, two rooms knocked into one, new utility room, new flooring throughout, and new patio doors.

Its amazing how one jobs leads to another…

Leak under tiled kitchen floor, means having to take kitchen units out and damage tiles to get to leak, however tiles are used throughout downstairs and no longer available, so to keep things uniform that means new downstairs flooring. Kitchen units are looking a bit old fashioned, so may as well replace those while we’re at it, and while we’re replacing kitchen units, may as well knock down that wall that separates the kitchen from the rest of the house, but now that we dont have a door to close off the kitchen , we’ll need to do something about the lack on insulation in the kitchen otherwise the whole house will be more freezing than usual, so that means new patio doors. The old kitchen units are not that bad though, but the utility units are really bad, so lets reuse the old kitchen to fit out the utility…

why can’t you re-lay what you have pulled up? Or has it been knackered doing so?

Just on the off chance, there’s no way you could cap off the existing and run a new main underground externally or up and through a roof space?

We are re-doing our hallway and fancied oak but a good friend, who also has a flooring company, suggested looking at LVT (luxury vinyl tiles). We were sceptical but had a look and are now converts. Looks amazing (can barely tell the difference between lvt and oak) but much more hard wearing.
Prices seem to vary between £30-60 plus laying, so not a cheaper option.
Just a suggestion.

This will be a new pipe but nowhere to go outside except on exterior and it’s listed building. Cheers all , sounds like my wallet is going to take a hammering and we won’t have heating for 2 weeks. Awesome ! Stuff pulled up was glued and nailed to a chipboard subfloor and there’s loads of it damaged.

Scary stuff a gas leak, how did you know without your place going bang?
I remember the tv adverts from years ago with the lightswitch getting pressed
Faulty workmanship somewhere or a nail hammered in where it shouldn’t be ?

I remember the tv adverts from years ago with the lightswitch getting pressed

Brian, do you smell gas?

BRIAN! NO!

You can smell gas at teenie concentrations, long before it gets an explosive mix.

If it’s an old steel pipe they rusted you may be able to shoot a plastic one down the inside of it, like the gas board do when replacing Street main and house connections. Worth investigating.

Reminds me, I smelt gas in this house just after I bought it nearly a decade ago, was a rusty feed from the street (which the gas board shot plastic through). I had the floor up recently to do stuff (just before Ciaran laid my floor and I saw they pipe…. So rusty I could see the plastic pipe through finger sized holes. 1936 semi and original feed I guess.

I know gas is low pressure and hard to track down, but can’t you do something else to narrow down the leak? Cap the pipe into segments where it is more accessible and send higher pressure air down it from a compressor or pump? Listen for whistling or contactless thermometer gadget to look for cold spots?

We’ve traced and capped it as much as possible but there is a 3m are where it goes under a bathroom and a staircase. Everything tested both sides but leaking in that void somewhere. Access would mean removing a bathroom and a staircase. It’s been renovated, pulling it apart its crap quality but hey ho nothing we can do about that now. It goes through a 20mm hole in a solid wall, no space round it and we suspect house has settled slightly and pinged a solder joint. Getting to it is almost impossible. Can’t go outside so plan b is new pipe via a different route. Interestingly house insurance doesn’t cover much, news to me!

Who are you insured with out of curiosity? Just looking at quotes at the moment (listed building too) so would be good to know if they’ve been pants/dodging it!

What did your insurers say? Most policies cover the cost of trace & access, including making good any damage caused as a result. You would normally be responsible for replacing the failed section of pipe though.

Yep they cover £1500 with a £500 excess – Hiscox. Will be having a chat and looking around. Also got £1000 on homecare but we could spend a lot fixing the floor.

Oh hello, someone mention flooring? 😀

So the old stuff was glued and nailed down? Was it full-coverage adhesive or just lines?

I imagine it’s probably pulled lumps out of the chipboard as well then? So you’ll be looking at replacing some of that too. P5 chipboard – prob in region of a tenner a sheet (1.44m2 per sheet) – so 30ish sheets. All that dependent on the condition of what’s been left when the oak’s come up.

You can get engineered oak from £30s/m2 (but it’ll be shite) up to £££/sqm. Labour to install will depend on local prices but you should probably be budgeting around £25/sqm for planks. I’d guess for your immediate needs, sort out your chipboard sub-floor first – at least that’ll give you something you can walk on and easily kept clean. Remember that if you have a solid sub-floor, you can look at 15mm products as the top layer doesn’t need to be structural.

A good quality engineered board these days is costing £50+/m2.

Any other questions, feel free to stick them here or email is in profile. Always happy to dish out some advice to STWers in a fix.

Thanks DD yeah it’s lines and a shambles. Option Z is we could probably get it all back down and level and carpet the hall, it would be quite nice !

Carpet? In a hall?

*shudders*
🙂

(Sorry, not trying to make light of your predicament – I realise you’re in a pickle.)

Have you got any pics of the sub-floor now that the oak’s been removed? I assume lots of that has had to be chopped up to get access…insurance guys are often not exactly artisanal. If you want to email some pics of the site instead of posting here, again feel free.

Apologies for the hijack but can I grab DD’s attention for a mo?

Am doing up 15m2 of space to form utility area / workspace to make stuff. Concrete slab is quite rough – can see aggregate in places. 95% covered with some kind of blue epoxy by previous owners. 3-4mm drop in places. Can I level this with Ardex NA as it’s latex and will supposedly stick to epoxy and bare concrete? If so, can I drop a DPM sheet on top? Plan is to top off with T&G 18mm chipboard, underlay then laminate.

Any help appreciated as I need to re-establish momentum on this and get it all kitted out before end Nov. Thanks

Can this be made ‘The’ flooring thread?
I’m nearly done with laying mine but my question is with the concrete floor underneath, I’m on the top floor of an 80’s build and when I took the underlay and carpet up to reveal a very un-level concrete floor the underlay felt cold and clammy to touch, not sodden but it definitely felt like it had moisture in it. The flat is not damp and the carpet was fine and it didn’t smell damp either, can a concrete floor really hold moisture like that? I can understand being on the ground floor but not above. Have use a taped underlay with a foil membrane but should I be worried about moisture in the floor now it can’t breathe as much through the carpet?

@spacemonkey

Yep, Ardex N/A would do that. I’d probably give it a lick of primer too – not so much to aid adhesion but to seal the surface and stop too much air bubbles. It also gives you a bit more working time with the latex as bare concrete is quite thirsty and the latex can cure quite quickly on it.

If you latex, then coat with a liquid DPM, then thin-coat latex on top, you could go straight onto that with your DPM (sheet) without the chipboard. You seem to be adding a lot of layers – do you really need the chipboard?

There’s a product from Instarmac called Level-it bond which does the same as Ardex N/A bit is a bit cheaper I think. Although if the Ardex is more readily available, then go with that – for the amount you’re buying, you won’t be spending that much more.

A few tips for mixing the latex:
Leave a handful or two in the bag – helps it “flow” a bit better.
Make sure you have a drill mixer – you cannot mix it by hand.
Whatever the mix time on the bag, double it – seriously. I tried this last week and it really does make a difference (also to the flow and workability).
You can buy extra long trowels – up to 18” – makes life a little easier.
A spiked roller (just google) while not essential will help even out trowel lines and prevent air bubbles.

@MrSmith

I dunno to be honest – you’d need a moisture meter on there to know for sure. I will say though that I won’t lay solid timber onto any concrete anymore – doesn’t matter how long it’s been poured or what level it’s on – it just keeps giving off moisture and the timber will end up cupping. My policy now is that unless the client is happy to pay for a liquid DPM before gluing direct to concrete, then they can find someone else to do it.

However, in your case, as you have a taped underlay with a foil backing, and you are on an upper floor, you should be ok. Personally, I’d have liquid DPM’d and glued direct with engineered over concrete but that’s just the way I like to do stuff so that I won’t be seeing the client until they want another floor. I’m sure yours will be fine.

Cracking bit of feedback DD, really appreciated.

That Level It (Ultra?) Bond looks v similar to the NA so I’ll check it out in more detail tomo.

Can you recommend a suitable primer and liquid DPM? At one point I was going to use KA SBR Bond from Wickes then lay down some BlackJack. Would those work with the situation I’m in alongside NA/Level It?

I thought laminate ‘needed’ chipboard if the subfloor was slightly out. If not then I’d look at 20mm insulation then underlay.

Thanks again

I’ll be surprised if it isn’t fine, just didn’t expect it to have any moisture in it.

I’d have liquid DPM’d and glued direct with engineered over concrete but that’s just the way I like to do stuf

In hindsight probably should have done it ‘properly’ as I assumed the floor would be nice and level and simply whack the underlay and floating floor down on top, it was wavy like a pump track 😯

@spacemonkey

Best practice is to use a DPM and primer both manufactured by the same company as the latex. You may have compatibility issues otherwise. Both Ardex and Level-it have their own DPMs and primers – I’m pretty sure they’re all the same bloody stuff, but you never know. As I’m doing it and being paid for it, I don’t want a manufacturer saying “Sorry mate, seems you used an incompatible product…” if it was to fail.

In your case, I’d:

Prime
Latex
Liquid epoxy DPM
Latex
DPM sheet
Underlay
Laminate

(Although you could just lay directly onto the latex with engineered timber and full coverage adhesive if that’s an option.)

unless the client is happy to pay for a liquid DPM before gluing direct to concrete, then they can find someone else to do it.

Wise move, it is incredible how long it takes for concrete to dry out…..

Update: I ‘WFH’ this morning which resulted in me putting my boiler suit on and getting under the floorspace. Looks like we could get a new pipe through by cutting another hole in a fllor we don’t care about.

In the meantime we’ve been using our immersion on the HW tank and now i have hot water pissing out the overflow, it never rain it just pishes money out the overflow 😉

Is it too early for a beer ? Gin, clear spirits don’t count do they ?

Earliest i can get a plumber – next Thursday, or pay 2.3x for BG to do it Monday. Forecast is -2.

Sent you a message re plumbers incase its helpful

Thanks, will give him a call.