How long it takes for screed to dry

If you’re in a hurry and wondering when screed will dry, look no further than this article. The main self-levelling floor screed enquiries our technical team receives are covered in the article below. We will, for instance, respond to questions about how screed dries, how long it takes to paint new floors, and when you may put flooring over fresh screed.

Thank goodness, a British Standard document exists to outline the correct procedures for laying flooring screeds that will support additional flooring. For screed installers or users who plan to paint floors and lay carpet or tiles after installation, the document is suitable.

The document is extremely thorough, as you could guess. The length of time it takes for screed to dry is the key issue we want to address in this post. The following calculation is recommended by the code of practise for drying screeds without a fast-drying additive.

“With levelling screeds, one day should be allowed for each millimetre of thickness for the first 50 mm. This is followed by an increasing time for each millimetre above this thickness. It is therefore reasonable to expect a levelling screed 50 mm thick, drying under good conditions, to be sufficiently dry in about 2 months.”

For floor screeds with a thickness between 50 and 75 mm, you should let the screed two days to dry for every mm of thickness. A 75mm thick screed without any additives may therefore anticipate it taking 100 days to dry to 75% humidity. This is in a nice drying environment. However, drying may take a lot longer in bad conditions, such as excessive humidity and/or low temperature. This is particularly true if open windows and doors or other methods are not used to remove the moisture that screed and plaster evaporate.

That pretty much concludes the summary article on how long screed takes to dry.

There are many screeds, we have always found the most popular to be Mapei Renovation Screed, Larsen SLC 1550, and Tilemaster LevelFlex+ DEPTH.