Concrete Floor Drying in Hull

Where Hull homes have concrete floors

• Back extensions on Victorian terraces, where the kitchen or bathroom usually is.
• Most postwar and council-built houses, with solid ground floors throughout.
• Newer homes, often with a screed over insulation.
• Hull City Council's newest flood-resilient homes, which deliberately use solid floors because they cope with flooding better than timber.

Why it takes so long

Water in a slab dries upwards and out through the surface. If that surface is covered by vinyl, laminate, tiles or carpet, it can't escape. As a rough guide, a screed dries at about a millimetre a day in good conditions, so a thick screed soaked right through can take weeks. Underfloor heating pipes and insulation below the screed complicate it further.

How we dry it

1. Lift the floor covering so the surface can breathe.
2. Take readings in the slab to see how deep the water went.
3. Dry with dehumidifiers and air movers, adding heat mats or insulated screed drying where the slab is deep.
4. Measure again before any new floor is laid, and record the result.

Why rushing costs more

Floor fitters and insurers both want the job finished, but new vinyl or engineered wood on a wet slab often fails within months. A final reading on record protects you if the new floor lifts later. For tiled floors, see tiled floors. For timber floors, see timber floors.

For what drying and the repairs after it usually cost, and what insurance tends to pay, see our water damage cost guide.