How to make a floor in a bath with your own hands

Recommendation points

• We mount the floor logs or fill the screed
• Warming and waterproofing
• Wood floor options
• Warm floor – why and how
• Screed, drains and odor trap

In the bath and sauna, the floors are used in extreme conditions. Their long service life can only be guaranteed with the initially correct device and due attention to the installation details. We have identified the best ways to install the floor in different rooms of the bath and we want to share them with you.

We mount the floor logs or fill the screed

There is a lot of disagreement as to whether the floor in the bath should be concrete or wooden. It all depends on the mode of operation and, most likely, you will have to combine different types of coatings in different rooms.

A floor made of natural wood is considered the most natural and warm for a bath, especially given the interior surroundings. Nevertheless, its service life is much lower than that of concrete, especially in conditions of constant wetting. You can rest assured that you will not regret the concrete floor in your shower room. For a steam room, it also suits perfectly: there will be the possibility of pouring and there will be less difficulties with installing the stove. And to keep your feet warm and comfortable, the concrete floor can be covered with plank ramps from above.

For the dressing room and rest room, an insulated plank floor is recommended. It is better not to use all kinds of wood imitations such as laminate and parquet boards, but linoleum or vinyl tiles will be very appropriate. Variants with a varnished floor made of groove-ridge boards are possible, in any case, it is better to make the supporting system and the subfloor wooden, and raise the finished coating 3-5 cm above the level of the steam room and shower.

Warming and waterproofing

A home bath is often viewed as a light construction and the foundation for it is rarely laid below the freezing depth, being limited to an MZLF with an underground part of only 40-50 cm or a columnar foundation in the manner of TISE. Because of this, the soil under the floor will always be damp and cold, which will not very well affect the durability..

Preparation for pouring a concrete floor is carried out as in the general case for shallow foundations. First, the soil is opened to the depth of the base, the concrete is washed and covered with a coating waterproofing. This is followed by the device of a hydraulic lock – a rammed layer of clay 25–30 cm thick. A damper pillow is poured directly under the screed. For the purpose of additional insulation, it is increasingly performed with expanded clay or expanded perlite with a layer of about 20 cm.

If a heating system is provided in the floor, EPSP or PPU plates are laid on top of the bulk insulation with sealing of the joints. This is followed by the construction of a preparatory and main concrete screed with a total layer thickness of 7-10 cm and one line of mesh reinforcement.

For wooden floors, soil preparation consists of installing pedestals stacked in one and a half bricks over the hydraulic lock. Bulk insulation is also used, but in this case it is recommended to mix it with powdered chalk in a ratio of 10: 1. A vapor barrier is laid on top of the thermal insulation. Its edges are tucked up on pedestals and walls with a margin of about 10 cm and glued with bitumen mastic or the remnants of waterproofing.

Before laying the logs on the pedestals, the wood must be impregnated with an antiseptic, however, the composition should not be toxic, therefore it is better not to use mining and creosote. The curbstones are also covered from above with 2-3 layers of roll or coating insulation.

Wood floor options

There are two typical wood floor designs, let’s call them beamed and frame. The difference is simple: in the frame system of the floor, boards placed on the edge are used. This type is recommended when installing a thin subfloor from a board less than 20 mm. The frequent step of the stiffeners (60–80 cm) excludes sagging and makes it possible to lay an additional 100–150 cm of insulation on a mesh or lathing lined from below.

The girder type of base is well suited for solid plank floors with a thickness of 25 or 40 mm, where the distance between the joists can reach 1–1.2 meters. Beams are chosen with a large section in order to parallel reduce the distance between the pedestals of the same row. A bar of 150×150 or 150×200 mm is well suited.

The zero point for leveling the wooden floor system should be 2–3 cm above the upper plane of the foundation. It is recommended to align beams or boards on mounting wedges and reinforce with cement mortar with the addition of 20–25% alabaster.

Warming a beam floor is not an easy task, it will be difficult to knock out the bottom crate with slats. Therefore, it is better to use a massive beam floor if it is cold, which is typical for free-standing and rarely used baths..

Warm floor – why and how

Unlike living quarters, a heated floor in a bath has a rather important secondary function. It not only gives the feet a comfortable warmth, but is also used to remove excess moisture after bath procedures..

Obviously, a heater stove with an additional heat exchanger may seem like a simple source of heating for a warm floor. Modular metal furnaces can be converted relatively simply, and it will not be difficult at all to put several pipes into the furnace of a brick furnace in a timely manner..

The method is not suitable for rarely used baths, where antifreeze must be poured into the water heating system, which does not tolerate severe overheating. On the other hand, the system must be carefully adjusted: supplying water to the floor at a temperature of 60–70 ° will not only burn the feet, but will not add durability to the screed or the tree. The problem can be solved:

1. Installing a low-grade heat exchanger on the chimney.
2. Using a variable speed circulation pump.
3. The inclusion of a warm floor in the collector with valve flow regulators.
4. Increasing the displacement of the system.

All these difficulties and disadvantages are devoid of an electric heating floor. It is recommended to use a heating cord with a screed thickness of at least 5 cm and a bookmark density of about 0.35 W / m². In rooms with a wooden floor, it will be the best option with film heating and linoleum. Recall that for the installation of a warm floor, a continuous slab thermal insulation with a thickness of at least 50 mm must be arranged under it.

Screed, drains and odor trap

One of the most difficult tasks to solve is considered to be the device of a wastewater removal system while maintaining the neatness and ease of use of the floor. The problem is especially acute in the case of work with a beam frame floor on a columnar foundation. Laying in an insulated layer will require passage through the logs, which is not the best reflected in the strength of the floor supporting system. And yet, this method of pipe passage is acceptable for a frame floor system with many stiffeners at least 100 mm high..

In general, the laying of sewer pipes should be planned as early as possible, preferably at the stage of laying the foundation. If it is not possible to lay the pipe in an insulated layer, the outlet from each connection point should be lowered into the ground to a freezing depth.

With a system of trenches, pipes are connected into a single network with a common drain with a slope of each section of at least 3 cm / m. The horizontal segments are covered with a 3 cm layer of sand, on top of which slabs of ordinary PSB 100 mm thick lie. The vertical sections of the pipes should be overlaid with a well made of foam blocks and secured with tape. In a frame bath, a pipe section between the ground and the floor is additionally enclosed in a painted OSB casing. Access to the pipe and insulation is provided from the inside.

When laying pipes in trenches, they are regulated not only by the slope, but also by the height of the sockets above the floor level. To connect sinks and sinks, the 50 mm pipe bends should be raised 60 mm above the finished floor. In the shower and steam room, the pipe is regulated together with the siphon drain installed on it, so that the grill is exactly at the level of the screed or tile.

A thin layer of screed – about 5–6 cm, is carried out along the beacons folded into a funnel for water drainage with a slope of about 1.5 mm / m. Often this layer is simply coated with waterproofing and covered with a boardwalk. More beautiful will be the option with a tiled floor. In this case, the screed funnel is laid along four beacons from the corners to the center, and the tiles or porcelain stoneware are laid out diagonally.