Compare dry screed and self-leveling floor

Dry screed and self-lev­el­ing floor are two sim­i­lar tech­nolo­gies. The pecu­liar­i­ty of the first is that it is actu­al­ly a dry ver­sion of the sec­ond. Under what con­di­tions is a screed more opti­mal, and for what sit­u­a­tions is a self-lev­el­ing floor suit­able? To answer this ques­tion, it is nec­es­sary to have an under­stand­ing of the fea­tures of both tech­nolo­gies. Our experts under­stood what is bet­ter: a dry screed or self-lev­el­ing floor.

Technology characteristics

Let us con­sid­er in detail the fea­tures, strengths and weak­ness­es of the two mod­ern floor sur­face fin­ish­ing tech­nolo­gies.

Dry screed

A sim­i­lar tech­nol­o­gy is used to lev­el the floor sur­face (it can be both rough and fin­ish). This method of fin­ish­ing the floor sur­face is used main­ly in the imple­men­ta­tion of con­struc­tion work in apart­ment build­ings or non-res­i­den­tial facil­i­ties (com­mer­cial / indus­tri­al). But for brick and wood­en build­ings, this tech­nol­o­gy is used much less fre­quent­ly.

What is a dry screed? This is a floor fin­ish­ing tech­nol­o­gy, rep­re­sent­ed by ready-made gyp­sum boards mount­ed on a pre­pared sur­face or back­fill (an impor­tant com­po­nent that helps lev­el the sur­face). There is anoth­er ver­sion of this tech­nol­o­gy: the fin­ished mix­ture is poured into cells pre­pared on the floor, on top of which the select­ed floor cov­er­ing can then be laid.

Among the main advan­tages of using a dry screed for floor­ing are:

1. Ease of instal­la­tion — unlike cement, for exam­ple, dry is very sim­ple — even a non-pro­fes­sion­al can lay the slabs;

2. The absence of a large amount of debris, dust — which can­not but rejoice, since the clas­sic screed leaves a lot of dust, and this is incon­ve­nient and expen­sive, espe­cial­ly dur­ing large-scale repairs.

3. The speed of work — after the instal­la­tion is com­plet­ed, you will not have to wait long for the mate­r­i­al to “set” — you can almost imme­di­ate­ly begin to per­form oth­er con­struc­tion work.

With all its advan­tages, dry screed has its weak­ness­es. In par­tic­u­lar, the dis­ad­van­tages include the high cost and con­sid­er­able thick­ness of the plates. The last point is espe­cial­ly impor­tant in cas­es where repairs are planned in a room with a low ceil­ing.

self-leveling floor

Self-lev­el­ing floor is a liq­uid mix­ture of thick con­sis­ten­cy, con­sist­ing of poly­mer com­po­nents. With this tech­nol­o­gy, small lev­el dif­fer­ences can be com­pen­sat­ed. When using the mix­ture, it is inde­pen­dent­ly even­ly dis­trib­uted on the floor sur­face. Like a dry screed, a self-lev­el­ing floor is easy to install, and also has a num­ber of pos­i­tive fea­tures:

1. Ease of use;

2. Wide range of col­ors;

3. Ease of care;

4. Abil­i­ty to with­stand sig­nif­i­cant loads;

5. Suf­fi­cient lay­er thick­ness (min­i­mum) — only 3.5 cm.

Although some peo­ple con­sid­er the self-lev­el­ing floor almost a panacea for any repair, this floor fin­ish­ing tech­nol­o­gy has its draw­backs:

1. Not very high strength;

2. Inabil­i­ty to equal­ize large height dif­fer­ences;

3. Depen­dence on a num­ber of oth­er build­ing mix­tures used in the repair of the floor;

4. Dif­fi­cult dis­man­tling.

Features of the application of technologies

The scope of the self-lev­el­ing floor and dry screed, despite the sim­i­lar­i­ty of the final result, is some­what dif­fer­ent. The first tech­nol­o­gy is used main­ly for inte­ri­or dec­o­ra­tion with increased require­ments for the floor sur­face. Its tech­ni­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics (in par­tic­u­lar its high degree of mois­ture resis­tance and resis­tance to aggres­sive sub­stances) make it an ide­al choice for indus­tri­al premis­es, as well as rooms with a seri­ous oper­a­tional load.

A self-lev­el­ing floor is an ide­al option if a slight adjust­ment of the floor height dif­fer­ence is required. An area in which this tech­nol­o­gy has no equal is the cre­ation of a top­coat. Three-dimen­sion­al, col­ored, com­bined, trans­par­ent with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of apply­ing a pat­tern under them — all these are self-lev­el­ing floors.

If the self-lev­el­ing floor often replaces the top dec­o­ra­tive coat­ing, then the dry screed is active­ly used as a work­ing coat­ing before lay­ing almost any floor mate­r­i­al (linoleum, tiles of any kind, lam­i­nate, par­quet boards, etc.). Dry screed can be used for concrete/wood floors, large floor height dif­fer­ences, etc.