Browse Forums General Discussion 1 Jun 04, 2010 10:20 am We are doing an extension to an 80 year old home in West Footscray VIC, we had decided on a concrete slab which we planned to polish, this decision was made on the factors of cost and that we have 3 young children, I was told a slab floor is low in noise and offers ease of cleaning - our builder is pushing us to abandon this idea and do stumps with a timber floor, he will do this for the same price. I am now confused, can anyone offer some sound advice - seeing as financial cost is irrelevant as they will be the same, what should we do? Will timber floors mark easily and be more difficult to maintain and clean? (The extension area will house kitchen,dinning and lounge with bedrooms upstairs) Re: concrete slab with polished floors OR stumps and timber 2Jun 04, 2010 11:50 am I'd be interested in hearing some responses to this question as well given we're just around the corner from beginnersluck. We are planning on extending with a slab as we were under the impression it was cheaper and had thermal mass advantages. Beginnersluck, how high are the stumps at your place? Clearance under our house (to the bearers) is only 30cm at its highest and probably less than half that where we want to extend. That height (and any slope - not that West Footscray is very hilly) may be influencing your builder's recommendation. As for the durability of the timber floor, that would depend on what you lay. Obviously the Baltic Pine that's in a lot of the houses around here is soft (our two labs make a mess of it) whereas hardwoods and bamboo would be much more hard-wearing in high traffic areas. Re: concrete slab with polished floors OR stumps and timber 3Jun 04, 2010 4:32 pm beginnersluck this decision was made on the factors of cost and that we have 3 young children, I was told a slab floor is low in noise and offers ease of cleaning - our builder is pushing us to abandon this idea and do stumps with a timber floor, he will do this for the same price. We had already planned to have a solid hardwood timber floor. For the sub floor however when building my new extension I was quoted a lot more for a slab but told that it will last forever. timber on stumps will eventually need restumping and is more prone to damp, rodents, noise. The original part of our house is still timber subfloor which we had restumped and rebuilt as part of the same reno. I wish we had got the slab poured in the original house too. whilst we now have solid hardwood over the entire lower floor it sounds much better over the slab. stays cool in summer. In hind sight i would have gone for in slab heating as well. If you're in a flood zone, not only are you dealing with the importation of fill and laying it down in 150 lifts to achieve compaction, you're going to have to consider… 4 5536 Are they stumps or screw piles ? How much fill is there, is the site a class "P" ? A "H2" site is not supposed to have stumps it is supposed to have grid beams according… 1 6955 Engineering timber is certainly a less fuss option, times cheaper to supply and install and better withstands humidity. 1 15923 |