Floor leveling cement is generally not for use in areas exceeding 3/8 – 1/2 inch thick. Raise the drain and use a bag of concrete mix. Mix the concrete with a latex additive instead of water to help it bond better and remain flexible. Then after the concrete mix has set up (24 hours or more) you can fine-tune the floor using a leveling compound.

Glenn

Thanks for the information. I will start with the cement then.

Can you tell me what the latex additive is? I have never h eard of it before.

Thanks,

Chris

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We are renovating the basement in our house. We are removing the carpet and installing laminate flooring. We have one small problem though. There is a drain in the middle of the floor. Around the drain for a diameter of about 2 feet the floor is sloping towards the drain. The drain is about 1.5" below the rest of the floor.

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this is cool, just registered to pretty much ask this same question. but here is one more.: what is the drain for? in case of emergency basically? just curious, we just bought this house and didn't know, thanks

taviscampbell@hotmail.com

[This message has been edited by freakofsnow (edited December 16, 2002).]

In our case the drain is in case the basement floods. The basement is fully underground and we have an electric hot water furnace. If a pipe breaks we have a good chance of flooding, hence the reason I am keeping the drain even though there hasn't been any water in the basement in 10 years. It is just in case of emergency.

Chris

I had a house that the floor sloped towards the drain in one corner of the house, it sloped quite a bit actually. Instead of messing with the slope I raised the floor and installed a subfloor over it. I put donw 1x4 PT sleepers, a sheet of plastice and then 1x4 regular on to of that with shims ever foot or so unti lthe entire flor was level and then sheeted it with 5/8" T & G. It was surprisingly solid and quiet. I then carpeted the whole thing. The walls i made with 2x4's and put plastic behind the walls against the concrete with it being attached to the floor joists above so that any water that cam in over the sill or through the foundation itself would run down the plastic and under the subfloor and into the drain. It worked quite well when we had a rather heavy snow fall and the melting snow ran into one of the windows. Instead of it damaging anything it did exactly what I had hoped it would. Ran down the wall, under the subfloor and right into the drain. It was a time consuming project but well worth it since the finished project didnt seem like it was in a basement, it felt just like any room in the house, even had a fireplace.