Concrete slab floors are an increasingly popular choice for new builds. When constructed correctly, they should last a long time before needing replacement.
Reinforcing should be placed high within a slab for crack tightness and control joints should be eliminated early on, while insulation must be added when building heated structures.
Hardness
Concrete slabs Melbourne floors can be uncomfortable for both small children and elderly residents who share the home, especially when combined with hard surface tiles such as carpeting. Area rugs may help provide relief.
Concrete floor slabs offer numerous benefits to their environment, including fire resistance and noise insulation, while offering long-term durability. Unfortunately, like any flat surface they can crack under heavy loads or poor design of foundation.
To reduce cracking, square holes should be avoided as these create reentrant corners which pull in different directions as concrete shrinks and tension is concentrated at these points. To control cracking use fiber for limited damage control, expansion materials to hide movement, or control joints to reduce its occurrence.
For optimal design strength and shrinkage reduction, concrete must be placed when temperatures are above freezing and use an accelerating admixture to accelerate curing times.
Moisture
Moisture is one of the primary culprits behind issues with flooring, often leading to bubbles, blisters and delamination in impermeable floor coatings such as seamless epoxy flooring or polyurethane coatings. Moisture may also present problems for concrete slabs that do not feature waterproofing barriers.
Building codes and floor covering manufacturers often mandate moisture tests on slab surfaces. A calcium chloride test (ASTM F 1869) can quickly and cheaply test for moisture vapor emission rates; it takes 72 hours or longer for results to become available.
Relative humidity testing provides another efficient and accurate method of testing slabs quickly. To conduct this test, a probe is inserted through a small hole in the concrete slab and measures moisture levels within. Though not as frequently utilized during construction projects, relative humidity testing can help assess conditions in concrete slabs to help decide whether it’s best to wait for natural drying processes or speed them up by finding ways to accelerate them faster.
Termites
Urban legend has it that termites don’t eat concrete, yet if your home is built on a slab it is imperative that you remain aware of the possibility of termite infestation. Wood-eating pests have been known to gain entry to wooden components of a house through cracks in foundations and walls and then traverse upwards via underground tubes made up of saliva-and-soil mixture created from worker termites’ saliva; workers then move through them eavesdropping on other elements without being detected by predators or moisture.
If your home is built on a slab, checking for termite damage requires looking out for mud tubes and listening for hollow sounding areas of woodwork. Insulating around the edges of your floor slab prevents heat loss through these areas while increasing your termite barrier – installed over all control joints, construction joints and pipe penetrations as well as sealing any sand-faced insulation for optimal protection – adding insulation can be costly but an upgrade worth making to protect your investment.
Insulation
Concrete floors can quickly transfer heat and cold to other rooms of your home, making it hard to regulate room temperatures effectively. This is particularly true if your floor slab lacks proper insulation. Insulating it properly helps regulate internal temperatures while decreasing heating costs.
Installing a vapor barrier layer before applying main insulation layers is critical, as this prevents moisture from seeping through into your foam insulation and eventually degrading its R-Value over time.
Polyisocyanurate insulation boards are an ideal choice for under slab insulation, featuring thermoset rigid foam construction composed of isocyanate and polyol liquid chemicals mixed by a catalyst and then blown with air to form closed cells. Polyiso offers excellent thermal performance, flame retardants and moisture resistance – as well as reflecting radiant heat back into the room – making it the ideal product to reflect radiant heat back from concrete slabs. However, be careful that direct contact does not occur between this product and concrete surfaces as this may corrode it over time!