The device of the floor on the balcony slab, its types, preparation of the base and technologies for the manufacture of tiled, wooden and self-leveling coatings.
The content of the article:
The floor on the balcony is the finishing coating of the base of the exterior structure of the house. In open space, it protects the balcony slab from the effects of precipitation and contributes to its durability. The insulated surface allows you to recreate an additional full-fledged room that can be used for household needs or recreation. How to make the floor on the balcony with your own hands, we will tell in this article.
The main types of balcony floors
Balcony floors, like ordinary ones, are wooden, self-leveling, tiled and polymeric. All of them can be supplied with cable or infrared electric heating systems. Consider briefly each of the types of such floors:
- Polymer. They are made of rolled linoleum with and without insulation, as well as PVC tiles. Can serve as an independent coating on concrete or decorative on wood.
- Bulk. The material for them are special self-leveling mixtures based on cement or synthetic resins.
- Tiled. Such floors for balconies are made of tiles or ceramic granite. Much less often, natural stone is used for their device: marble, granite, etc. This is due to its significant weight, which can overload the balcony slab above the permissible norm.
- Wooden. This is parquet, grooved boards or laminated wood. They are much warmer than tiles and have less weight compared to tiles. These properties have made wood the most popular option for balcony flooring.
When choosing one or another floor, you should take into account the type of balcony. For an open type construction, tile or the simplest finishing option is more suitable - painting the polished surface of the concrete slab. The materials used for outdoor work must withstand repeated cycles of seasonal freezing and thawing. For a glazed balcony, any of the above floors is suitable.
Balcony floor preparation
To get a quality floor on the balcony, you need to prepare a base for it. This work will have to be done regardless of the type of planned flooring. It consists in cleaning the surface of the concrete slab from old worn decor or loose screed, removing debris and leveling the resulting base with or without a slope.
Depending on the type of old coating, it can be dismantled using a hammer and chisel, a puncher and a milling machine, an ax and a crowbar, a scraper, paint removers or a grinder with an abrasive bowl. The defects of the old screed on the concrete floor of the balcony are determined by tapping it. A dull sound means the need to replace the damaged area, and preferably the entire screed. Moreover, the area of \u200b\u200bthe balcony is usually not so large.
Lighthouses, formwork, dry cement mix and water will be required to level the cleaned base. In addition, you should stock up on the necessary tools and a container for mixing the solution. All this is useful for the manufacture of a new screed, which should be done in this order:
- Lighthouses, which are a galvanized metal T-profile, must be cut into pieces, the lengths of which will correspond to the width of the balcony. There should be several such pieces, and they should be placed across the base at distances of 0.4-0.5 m from each other. After that, the top of the lighthouses should be leveled in the same plane horizontally or with a slight slope in the open version of the balcony. For this procedure, you can use pieces of plywood or other flat material, placing them under each of the beacons. The control of the horizontal or slope of the installed profiles is carried out by the building level.
- After checking, each beacon must be fixed on the concrete slab of the balcony using cement mortar, which is applied locally at the profile supports to the leveling pads. It is worth starting the next stage of work in about a day, when the solution hardens and the fastening of the beacons will receive sufficient rigidity.
- After fixing the profiles, the formwork is made, the material for which is the beams fixed from the outside of the balcony to its fence. All gaps between the formwork and the base should be covered with a sealing compound and allowed to dry completely.
- Do-it-yourself mortar for floor screed on the balcony must be prepared from a dry mix according to the instructions, which describe in detail the kneading process, the necessary proportions and is located on the product packaging. To enhance the strength of the future screed, 3 kg of cement can be added to the mixture bag. The consistency of the finished solution should be homogeneous and semi-liquid. For its kneading, an electric drill with a mixing nozzle is used. Before pouring the screed, the base of the future floor should be treated with a penetrating primer. It will provide better adhesion of the solution to the concrete slab of the balcony.
- The finished mixture must be poured immediately into the entire space limited by the formwork and walls. In the process of work, the surface of the solution must be evenly distributed with a wide spatula or trowel, and then smooth the mixture with the rule, pressing it tightly against the lighthouses and moving along them, as if on rails. The resulting screed should dry for at least two days. In the conditions of an open balcony, it should be protected from precipitation and sunlight at this time in order to avoid the appearance of cracks. This can be done by covering it with an opaque film or simply covering it with dry sawdust if the weather forecast is good.
- When the screed has gained sufficient strength, the formwork should be carefully removed and the unevenness of the coating along the edges in the places of the removed beams should be corrected with a thick solution. The corners of the screed must be reinforced with a special metal perforated profile.
Laying tiles on the balcony
The tile is considered by right the best floor covering for balconies. It perfectly tolerates temperature changes, is not afraid of sunlight, has high strength, beautiful appearance and does not create problems with cleaning.
Such tiles can have a matte or glazed surface. If the floor on the balcony is not planned to be covered with a rug or some other soft material, it is better to choose matte tiles for it, as it is less slippery than glazed.
Due to the fact that the tile has a somewhat porous structure, it is desirable to use it for facing the floors of closed-type balconies. For outdoor work, its variety is used - ceramic granite, which is much denser. If an ordinary tile has a hydrophobicity of up to 20%, then a similar value for porcelain stoneware is less than 0.05%.
The consequence of low moisture absorption is increased frost resistance of such tiles. Ceramic granite is devoid of all the shortcomings of tiles, therefore it is able to withstand significant mechanical loads for a long time, frost down to -50 ° C and heat + 50 ° C, without losing its functional and aesthetic properties at all.
To lay tiles on the floor on the balcony, you will need: frost-resistant or ordinary tile adhesive, primer, grout and crosses for seams, a tile cutting machine, grinder, mallet, notched and rubber trowel, building level, water and sponge.
The work should be done in the following sequence:
- First you need to soak the tile in water for 1-2 hours so that when laying it does not draw moisture from the adhesive, thus ensuring maximum adhesion. During this time, the screed must be treated with a primer, this will remove dust from it and increase adhesion to the binder.
- Then, the adhesive composition should be prepared from the dry mixture according to the instructions located on its packaging. This procedure must be performed using an electric drill-mixer, stirring the mixture, mixed with water, until a homogeneous plastic state.
- It is recommended to start laying tiles from the corner of the balcony farthest from the threshold. The adhesive should be applied to the screed in serrated small areas up to 1 m 2 area. When applying a tile to it, each product needs to be rubbed a little, check its position with a level and upset as necessary with a rubber mallet. The surface of the cladding should be a single plane without protrusions, this can be checked using a rule or a flat wooden lath.
- To ensure the same seams of the coating, separation plastic crosses are inserted into the gaps between the tiles, two for each of the gaps. The dimensions of the cross-sectional square section of these products can be 2x2, 3x3, 4x4 mm or more. By selecting suitable crosses, you can get the desired width of the facing seams.
- After all the tiles have been laid, the coating must be left for a while to cure the adhesive underneath. After a day, the crosses can be removed and grouted. This will require a special mixture, which can be of any color. It is recommended to select it to match the tiles. The contrasting color will clearly define the borders of the tiles and can emphasize the shortcomings made when laying the material. The color of the grout, which matches the background of the cladding, will create the impression of its solidity.
- Filling the joints with the mixture is carried out using a rubber spatula. Its excess must be immediately removed from the surface of the tile with the same tool. After partial drying of the composition, its traces from the lining should be removed with a hard sponge, and after some more time, wash the coating with warm water.
Device on the wooden floor balcony
A wooden covering on the logs is the best option for a balcony covered with glazing. Most often, the floor in the apartment is located at a higher level in relation to the balcony slab. Using such a wooden structure, you can significantly reduce this height difference for comfortable movement from the room to the balcony and back.
Before starting the installation of a wooden floor, you need to immediately decide what will serve as its topcoat. If a plank floor is planned, then only tongue-and-groove edged boards will be needed. When using other materials for finishing on logs, it will be better to lay thick plywood, and then fix linoleum, parquet or tile directly on it.
Work on the device of the floor includes the following stages: waterproofing, installation of the frame, insulation and flooring. For its implementation, you will need consumables: a beam with a section of 50x50 or 70x70 mm for the manufacture of logs, hydro and vapor barrier films, insulation, screws, metal corners and dowels, tongue and groove boards or plywood.
Installation of a wooden floor should be carried out in the following sequence:
- First, the floor screed must be covered with a layer of waterproofing membrane in order to prevent the absorption of moisture from the concrete slab by the insulation.
- Then a thin layer of rolled insulation must be laid on the waterproofing. It is better if it is foil material. Its heat-reflecting layer should face outwards.
- After that, around the perimeter of the balcony, build a frame from a bar pre-impregnated with an antiseptic. Its internal cavity should be filled in increments of 50 cm with transverse wooden lintels of the same material. Between themselves, all elements of the frame are fastened with screws, and to the base - with metal corners using dowels. If the balcony is wide, you can additionally install another longitudinal beam in the middle of the frame. All logs must be placed in one strictly horizontal plane. To adjust their level under the bars on the insulation, you can put pieces of plywood, tiles, etc.
- When the installation of the frame is completed, mineral wool slabs should be laid in its cells, which will serve as the main floor insulation. There should be no gaps between the plates and the bars of the frame.
- On top of the insulation, it is necessary to lay a vapor barrier film and fix it on the frame with stapler brackets. The joints of the insulation sheets must be glued with metallized tape.
- After that, tongue-and-groove boards or plywood screws can be attached to the logs of the wooden floor on the balcony, which will act as a rough coating. You can limit yourself to varnishing or painting it, or lay linoleum on top or perform another finish.
On the open balcony, you can also make a wooden floor. But this requires a special material called "decking" (English decking - deck covering). In another way, it is called "garden parquet" or "terrace board". Unlike any wooden floor, it is not particularly picky about high humidity and does not have a rigid attachment to the base.
The reliability of a garden parquet coating is due to the biological resistance of its wood. The front part of each module consists of wooden lamellas arranged in patterns. The module substrate, if it is made of plastic, has a locking mechanism, with the help of which the decking elements are connected to each other.
The terrace board can also simply be laid on the floor joists. Atmospheric precipitation, summer heat and frost in winter do not affect its initial quality. The material, having a low weight, does not load the balcony slab, in contrast to the tiled coating, which, together with the adhesive, forms a fairly heavy layer.
Do-it-yourself self-leveling floor on the balcony
This coating is the most durable. It is elastic, waterproof, has excellent wear resistance and is resistant to temperature changes. The self-leveling floor can be given any color and even a 3D effect.
It is a polymeric liquid coating, which, spreading evenly, forms a decorative heavy-duty film with a thickness of more than 2 mm on the surface of the base.
Before covering the floor on the balcony with such a composition, it is necessary to prime the screed abundantly and repeatedly to ensure good adhesion of the materials used. When processing the base, each previous layer of primer must dry before applying the next one.
After a day, you can start pouring the floor. As materials for it, epoxy, organic or polyurethane compounds are used. For the manufacture of any of these mixtures and their use, there are special instructions developed by manufacturers that must be followed.
Such coatings are quite expensive. In case of financial difficulties, you can use budget options for flooring on the balcony: just paint the screed or cover it with linoleum.
How to make a floor on the balcony - look at the video:
In any case, a self-made floor will provide the necessary comfort during the operation of the home and will bring moral satisfaction to its creator. Good luck!
