Having experienced the treacherous nature of the traditional tiled flooring here in Greece I was very clear that, with advancing years, I should avoid this as I could not risk any falls. From the outset, therefore, I specified that I wanted an industrial non-slip concrete floor which seemed more appropiate in an industrial style building.
Whilst the soil pipes were already encased in a protective sleeve within the concrete sub-floor the water supply was piped, again in a protective sleeves, around the house on top of the sub-floor. The depth of the industrial concrete floor was designed to cover these pipes sufficiently to minimise any chance of subsequent surface cracking, about 10cm in all. As always the concrete for the floor required reinforcing with standard metal mesh.
Following the difficulties that arose with constructing the driveway up to the house (see previous post) a temporary access was made to allow the floor laying team to reach the house and an area was cleared and levelled as a stable base for the concrete pump.
After the team had laid the concrete it was tamped down by hand, smoothed and further tamped and smoothed using a machine with rotating metal blades and then finished by hand.
The finishing process involved spreading quartz grit over the surface and then working this into the surface using the rotating blade machine and by hand. This was repeated several times until a high quality surface resulted.
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| Temporary way up to house for flooring team. |
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| Reinforcing mesh in position above water pipe. |
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| Damping down before pouring the special flooring concrete mix. |
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| Concrete pump snaking its way into house to deliver concrete as close as possible to where required. |
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| The flooring team lifting reinforcing and pouring the concrete into place. |
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| Smoothing the concrete using rotating steel blades and hand finishing. |
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| Completed bedroom floor. Note surplus quartz "grit" used in succesive smoothing processes. |
