Why is Proper Laitance Removal a Necessity? Your Top Questions Answered

Builders and contractors who have years of experience under their belts would be the first to tell you how crucial it is to remove laitance. There are now plenty of laitance removal specialists in the UK, and they can ensure the thorough preparation of your flooring through laitance removal, allowing you to have a floor cover that properly binds or sticks to your screeding. The process of removing laitance includes sanding, and the expert will simply extract the debris and dust particles from your screed as efficiently and thoroughly as possible. There are also different methods involved in the removal of laitance, and this includes shot blasting, grinding, mechanical planing, abrading, and scrabbling. Your laitance removal expert should be able to give you the right advice on which method will work best for your screeding and flooring. But why is proper laitance removal a necessity in the first place? Here, your top questions are answered.

Why you need to remove it

The first and most important fact you should know about laitance is that it doesn’t properly adhere to the aggregate, and since laitance is inherently weak, it can easily delaminate if there is a lot of traffic on the floor or if there is a lot of impact, especially heavy or strong impact. Aside from this, laitance can easily get dusted away due to abrasion caused by traffic on the floor. For both practical and security reasons, you need to make sure that your new flooring surface is properly bonded to the aggregate mass in the base on which the flooring is laid. The more the floor is used, the greater and higher the fluctuations in temperature experienced by the flooring, which can definitely affect its longevity and integrity. Laitance can also cause damaged and dusty concrete flooring, and if you don’t remove it, this may well result in the overall failure of the floor surface.

The different methods of removing laitance

Laitance removal can be achieved through different methods, as previously mentioned. But before you choose any single method, you first have to determine the use of your floors. There really isn’t any single perfect method as you need to consider the entire environment before you make your decision on which method to use. For instance, the method of scabbling could be suitable for the preparation of a concrete floor when the site is unoccupied, but the noise and dust produced by the method may make it unsuitable for other situations and environments. Acid etching, on the other hand, can be quite effective and thorough, but it isn’t suitable for spaces or areas wherein the fumes of the etching, which are corrosive, can attack steel components and parts.

Dust-free grit blasting is also another method for the removal of laitance, and it is said to be the most efficient (and fastest) removal method with the use of different-sized machines. A surface that is slightly inclined or horizontal, for instance, can be abraded and impacted by the steel abrasive, which is propelled by the machine. This process is a dry one, and you can continue with other flooring tasks whilst the preparation is going on in nearby or adjacent spaces.

You can also make use of other methods such as mechanical planing, grinding, or abrading, but for best results, seek out the recommendations of a laitance removal professional so you have additional peace of mind.

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