If you are having a new home built in Reading, there are many things to take into consideration. No doubt you will have many ideas for exactly what you want, because otherwise why have a new home built from scratch in the first place?
Once you have a site, you can have your architects design your new home and include everything that you want, whereas if you buy an existing home there are always going to be some things that you are not so keen on, or it may be missing something that you would have liked. Designing your own home gives you everything, so if you can afford to do it, that is the best way to go.
Of course, when you are designing your own home there are always going to be some essentials that are common in any home, such as a kitchen, bathroom, toilets, and so on. It will also have four walls – or maybe more, depending upon the design – a roof, and floors. When you look at these you still have certain choices.
The roof can have tiles made from various materials, but it most certainly needs to be weathertight. The same goes for the walls. The floor doesn’t have to deal with the weather, and you can also have it finished in different materials, but one thing is for sure and that is that it needs to be flat. That may sound obvious, but let’s take a closer look.
Whatever type of final flooring you choose – wood, tile, carpet, laminate, vinyl, concrete, and so on – it needs to be laid on a substrate that is also flat and level. You can’t attach, for example, tile directly to a concrete substrate because it won’t be level enough. So, you need another layer on top of the concrete in order to provide a level base for the final floor surface. This is known as a screed.
Now there are two basic types of screed that you can use, either a sand and cement mix, or a liquid screed in Reading which uses anhydrous (dry) calcium sulphate in place of the cement as a binder. When water is added to calcium sulphate it becomes gypsum. These liquid screeds have several advantages over and above a sand and cement screed. They are also known by a number of different names – calcium sulphate screed, gypsum screed, liquid screed, self-levelling screed, anhydrite screed, and more. But they are all laid in liquid form as opposed to sand and cement.
The Speed Of Laying
One big advantage of liquid screeds is the speed of laying. On any building contract, time is money, and a sand and cement screed takes a lot of time. It is mixed on site in a cement mixer, barrowed on to the substrate, and then laid by a labourer on hands and knees using a trowel. It may instead be delivered ready mixed, which will ensure a more consistent mixture, but is still laid the same way.
By contrast, a liquid screed is delivered to the site ready mixed, and a hose and pump is connected to the truck which then simply pumps the liquid screed into position. The result is that it can be laid up to 20 times faster than sand and cement.
It is also self-levelling, as you see from one of its’ names. Because it is liquid when poured, it simply levels itself out in the same way as a glass of lager or wine does. The surface becomes flat.
Even though it is liquid, it dries out very quickly. At UK Screeds we can pour a screed on Tuesday for you, and it will be dry enough to walk on by Thursday, and sometimes, Wednesday. That means that other contractors who need to work on your home, such as painters and decorators, won’t get held up waiting for the screed to dry.
If you are installing underfloor heating, which many homes have these days, there are several more benefits in using liquid screed. It can be laid more thinly than sand and cement screed, so you need less material. That means that the heating uses less energy to arrive at the ambient temperature. So, you will save on heating bills in your new home.
