A liquid floor screed is much quicker to apply than a traditional floor screed. A traditional sand and cement floor screed is a semi-dry product and is laid manually. It can be mixed on site or delivered from a factory, but either way it means working on your hands and knees.
A liquid screed in London, however, is delivered to site and pumped in, so is much quicker to lay. There is no need to get on your hands and knees, and because it is a liquid it will settle to a more level surface than a hand laid one. It is also denser than a traditional screed, so makes for better soundproofing.
This also makes for better thermal conductivity, or heat transfer, which is why we are being asked to provide our liquid floor screed in London much more often these days where underfloor heating is being installed. Better conductivity makes for less energy required to produce the same amount of heat.
There are two sorts of liquid screed and these are cement based and anhydrite based. Anhydrite screeds offer even better thermal conductivity than cement-based screeds. Both types of screed have the advantage that they do not shrink or curl, which makes them resistant to cracking.
However, an anhydrite screed is also environmentally friendly. Up to as much as 36% of it consists of recycled materials and it produces far less CO2 than a cement-based screed. This is because it contains a proportion of gypsum. There are more advantages of a liquid anhydrite screed in that it can be applied as a very thin layer which means that there is less weight than a traditional screed so no reinforcement is necessary.
Furthermore, the liquid screeds that we provide at UK Screeds are laid very quickly. The floors in a typical house can be poured and levelled in just a few hours.