The Screed Scientist has an Apprentice!

If you have joined our gang on the Screed Scientist website to learn a thing or two about screeding, well consider yourself lucky in that you might actually know more than our latest recruit 'The Screed Apprentice' It occurred to us that we were a bit heavy on the boffin side with The Screed Scientist,...

Screed Protection Considerations

Protection to levelling floor screeds should be carried out as soon as possible after installation. This is especially true on large construction sites with where many tradespeople are potentially competing to access the available work areas. The expected traffic type and volume should be considered to determine the type of protection required. Instructions on heavy loadings...

Wearing (Granolithic) Screed, what is it and where best to use it.

Wearing screeds, widely known by the former name of granolithic screeds, are high-density toppings suitable for application to green or hard concrete slabs. Offering characteristics desirable for areas likely to be subjected to severe wear and heavy traffic, these toppings are the preferred choice for industrial flooring projects. Granolithic screeds consist of cement, sand and...

Screed Scientist Christmas 2015

MIND = Make It No Danger It is that wonderful time of the year again. Playful snowflakes, the smell of pine from the Christmas tree, the festive spice of cinnamon, the suave flavour of oranges, stockings hung by the chimney…Yes, the Christmas break is approaching quickly and everyone is excited, including Santa, his reindeers and...

Screed Reinforcement – What's the Crack

Shrinking, curling and cracking can lead to problems with flooring. Using reinforcement may reduce their impact and lend greater strength to the floor. Before we begin with this blog post, we need to be clear that there are many products, architect specifications and project related conditions that need to be considered and that you should...

Relative Humidity – Do You Know What it Means for your Screed?

At first glance, relative humidity (RH) is a quite confusing topic. Since people use different terms such as moisture, vapour, water content, relative humidity, absolute humidity, actual humidity, specific humidity or just humidity to indicate how moist the air is, many of them feel confused when they come across the term “relative humidity”. In...

Our 5 Most Popular Pages This Month

The Screed Scientist website is great for expanding your screeding knowledge. And this month nearly 6000 visitors used it to help them with their projects. Some of our most popular articles have been related to Underfloor heating with many of our readers looking for detailed information on how to make sure that their underfloor...

What affects screed drying time?

All screed mixes contain more water in them than what is required to hydrate the cement. Just about 40-50% of the water added to a screed mix is used to hydrate the cement, whilst the remaining 50-60% takes up the role of making it workable. Once the screed is installed, this ‘excess’ construction water...

Preventing sulphate attacks on anhydrite screeds

Anhydrite/gypsum based screeds are popular for their free-flowing and self-levelling properties as well as ease of installation. They differ from traditional screeds in that they use a calcium sulphate binder instead of Portland cement in the screed mix. The calcium sulphate based binders allow the screed to be laid to a lower thickness than...