wooden floors on new cement?

[polly28]

we are having an extension built to start on monday and was discussing this with friend.He said if I wanted a wooden floor I'd have to wait weeks for the floor to dry before it could be laid.

This means I would have to wait weeks for the kitchen to be installed.Is there a quicker way to go about this?Has anyone had a wooden floor laid in a new build?

I think cement dries quicker than that. We had our kitchen done 5.5 years ago and we certainly didn't wait more than a day. We had tiles put in but the floor needed to be made level with cement. We are hopefully having parquet put in in a couple of months and the floors will all need levelling with cement. We had a quote for this last summer and the guy (from a local big department store) didn't mention more than one day's work. We have changed our minds about which rooms need doing so will need a new quote etc.

DH says - yes you do have to let it dry out before putting a surface on it otherwise you seal in the moisture. And it does takes week for cement/concrete to dry out.

But (my thoughts) presumably they lay the cement before they build the walls - so in the time it takes to build the walls and roof, and then build the internal structures, tehn plaster etc - it will be drying out all that time. THEN you put the wooden surface on - probably that is weeks between the two.

What did the builder who quote for in terms of time? Did he break it down into phases ? When are you expecting to be using the extension ?

Apology for misleading earlier message. Just checked with DH and what we used in our kitchen was self-levelling flooring compound, which is a fast-drying material (a matter of hours), but not real cement. Proper, building cement does take ages to dry and settle.

We had laminate layed over a new concrete floor. We waited 6 months before putting it down. (Think it was 1 month per inch of concrete depth)
see here for installation guide

thanks for your replies.

yes throckenholt,I hadn't thought about the time between the floor going down and the walls going up-good point!presuming it doesn't rain too much before the roof goes on I suppose.

I was told by the builder that the whole extension would take about 4 months (6-8 in real time I guess).They start tomorrow am so will ask then.

They will put down foundations first, build the walls & roof, then screed the floors once the walls are up.

We put solid oak floors in our cottage six weeks after the floor had been concreted, 2yrs on and it looks great!

We finished laying 10cm of concrete on our floors in October and by December it still had too much damp in it to lay the wooden floor....the floor people come every so often to take a reading and will only lay it when they are satisfied that it is truly dry (obviously it looks and feels dry to us, but they say if the reading is too high the floor will buckle and be damaged!) So it looks like it will be able to be laid end Feb...rough rule was 1mm per day, so we had 100mm, so three months...(and we had an accelerator in the concrete).

Do you leave a heater on? we had a huge heater we hired a dehumidifier (can't spell!)

polly28 we are currently having an extension built and the concrete floor was the first thing they did - they have also built a scaffolding 'shell' with a plastic wrap 'roof' and 'walls' so even if it rains the floor stays dry - might be worth mentioning to builders? We can't have wooden floors as you need to raise the height of the floor by 3" and our ceilings are already ridiculously low (cottage)

thanks for those replies,

I'll ask the builders about the floors,they are digging at the moment ..don't want to disturb.

Ds has been so excited to have a digger in the garden!!

Hoe do these developers on tv's property ladder or grand design do the decorating so quickly after the build?

they don't care - they are selling it quickly and hopefully no damage will show up in that time ! Or they don't lay new floors.

We are planning a new extension to start in a coulke of months - my boys are going to go mad with excitement at the diggers

Concrete slab (floor) will be done very early in the building process and wooden floors would be just about the last thing you do. There will be plenty of time inbetween.