Floor Screeding Contractor Insurance

This is the question that decides the expensive claims in screeding, and the answer is usually nobody in writing.

A floor finish laid onto a screed that still holds construction moisture fails: vinyl blisters, adhesive breaks down, wood cups or lifts, and a resin loses adhesion. Discovering it means lifting the finish across the area, drying the screed properly, and laying the finish again, with every following trade waiting. The sums involved are well beyond the screeding package. And the cause is always the same: somebody decided the floor was ready.

So the moisture testing position needs to be explicit rather than assumed. Who tests, to what method, where in the floor, and what result is acceptable for the specified finish. Record the result with the date and location, and state plainly in writing when a screed is not ready. Where a main contractor or a flooring contractor proceeds anyway, get that decision recorded. A screeder who can produce a test result and a written warning is in a completely different position from one who was told the floor was wanted on Monday.

Liquid screed makes a better floor faster and it behaves like water, which produces the claims this trade actually notifies.

Anywhere there is a gap, flowing screed will use it: an unsealed service penetration, a gap at a door threshold, a riser, a lift shaft, a joint in the deck, a hole around a soil pipe, or the perimeter where the edge detail was not continuous. It then appears in the room next door, in a riser cupboard, or through a ceiling into a finished space below. On a refurbishment with occupied floors underneath, that is somebody's office or flat.

So preparation is the whole job rather than a stage of it. Every penetration sealed and checked by walking the area rather than assuming the previous trade did it, threshold dams fitted, perimeter edging continuous, and the floor below inspected and warned before a pour where there is any possibility of escape. Photograph the sealed penetrations before pouring. The pour itself is quick; the preparation is what stops a claim, and a pour started before preparation is finished is the version that goes wrong.

A screeder frequently pours over pipework and cables installed by another trade, and once it is down there is no inspection possible.

Underfloor heating pipe, electrical conduit, data containment and sometimes plumbing sit in the zone a screed covers. A pipe punctured by a barrow wheel, a boot, a reinforcement pin or a laser tripod does not reveal itself until commissioning, by which point the screed is cured and the remedy is breaking out a floor to find a leak. Whose damage it was becomes very hard to establish after the event, and the heating installer's position is that it was intact when they left.

Which makes the handover between trades the control. Insist the system is pressurised and the gauge visible before you start, record the pressure at the start and at the end of the pour with photographs, and stop if it drops. That single habit converts an unanswerable dispute into a documented fact. Also keep boards and routes for barrows rather than wheeling across pipework, and raise anything already damaged before you cover it rather than pouring over a problem.

The quality claims in screeding are about movement, and the cause frequently lies below the screed rather than in it.

Screeds crack and curl for reasons that include thickness, mix, curing, and the absence of movement joints, which are the screeder's responsibility. They also debond and fail because the substrate was dusty, contaminated with plaster or paint, insufficiently prepared, still wet, or itself moving. A screed laid on a poor base will fail and look exactly like bad screeding, and the conversation happens months later with the base buried.

So the substrate inspection is worth as much as the pour. Record the condition before preparation and after, note contamination, moisture and anything structural that is moving, and raise it in writing before laying rather than proceeding on a base you have doubts about. Where a specification sets a thickness your base cannot accommodate, or omits movement joints you think are needed, say so at the start. Where you specify the screed yourself, that is advice, and it should be insured as such.

The failed floor finish is the claim that matters. We are an FCA regulated broker and will not tell you we are the best choice. These are the questions that decide it.