Advice on replacing old wood floor with concrete & DPC

We're renovating an old house that has suspended wood floors in two front rooms. Our engineer advised us that these should be replaced with concrete floors with a DPC as there seems to be a small amount of dampness. We're going to have the exterior walls drylined but I've been trawling the boards looking for someone with a similar problem with the floors.
House is in south Galway and rooms are 4mx4m and 4mx3m. Is this a specialised job or can any builder take it on? Looking for advice on how much this would cost and how long it would take. Any advice or tips would be most appreciated or even if someone could recommend a company in the area?

ircoha

Loubytee wrote: »

We're renovating an old house that has suspended wood floors in two front rooms. Our engineer advised us that these should be replaced with concrete floors with a DPC as there seems to be a small amount of dampness. We're going to have the exterior walls drylined but I've been trawling the boards looking for someone with a similar problem with the floors.
House is in south Galway and rooms are 4mx4m and 4mx3m. Is this a specialised job or can any builder take it on? Looking for advice on how much this would cost and how long it would take. Any advice or tips would be most appreciated or even if someone could recommend a company in the area?

My instinct would be to go for a well ventilated and well insulated timber floor on dwarf walls on a proper subfloor with dpc/radon membrane and keep the ends of the joists away from the walls.

My thinking is that you really dont know what you will be covering up with a concrete slab.
The other point is that a concrete floor will take a while to dry out, in case time is an issue.

Thank you for the advice Ircoha, will look into this as an alternative. Sounds better as time is a bit of an issue. I think this forum is going to become my second home over the coming months - the house needs a lot of work! Thanks again.

muffler

You can certainly go for the option as ircoha mentioned or you can carry on with what your engineer suggested.

Should you opt for concrete floors thens its a reasonably straight forward procedure. You will need to excavate out everything below the existing floors and the 3 main things to be careful with are - damp proofing, insulation and installing a radon sump and membrane.

Any decent builder should be more than capable of this work but it would be essential that your engineer inspects the works.

Thanks again for advice Muffler, as mentioned before, the house needs a fair bit o work so I may be regularly pestering ye on the boards. All hints and tips most welcome!

250882

Again just so you know casting in concrete will release a lot of moisture into the house so make sure there is ventilation aplenty.