Hi. Keen DIY enthusiast here..not a seasoned pro! We are renovating a 1930s semi. We have already knocked a wall down to create an open plan kitchen/diner and the idea was to lay Evo core vinyl laminate thru the room including the hallway. The diner is a suspended timber floor. The kitchen is newish quarry tiles on a screeded subfloor. The plastic DPM is visible at the edges so know this has been done. It's a very solid and sound floor. However..The quarry tiles in the hallway are lifting and are all loose. The cement pad underneath has degraded. It's mainly just crumbly sand. There is clearly no DPM given the age of the house. The slab is probably sitting on earth? If the slab is same thickness as void under suspended timber floor then it's best part of 60 cm thick. The same floor continues thru understairs cupboard (but is seemingly solid in there) and also supports the bottom of the stairs. What are my options please? Do I need to fully remove and replace? Can I remove some - say 50mm, add a DPM and screed? Thanks!
Its not degrading as such. Itll be a traditional lime screed that was used to bed quarries on in the early part if the century. You could lift it and replace it or you could overlay it with a polythene DPM and put 15 to 20mm of TS15 screed on it to bring it back to level.
