What Is Magnesite Flooring

Made from calcined or burnt magnesite and various.

What is magnesite flooring.

It allows concretors to screed the floor slab without doing final finishing. The magnesite material is simply poured out over the concrete raked out and trowell. Magnesite was applied to the top of concrete ground floors which resulted in reddish pink hued colored floors. It is a material that has a cushioning effect underfoot.

Also a small lump when held in gas flame will glow brightly like a gas mantle at the edges. Magnesite flooring consists of magnesium oxychloride which is a white asbestos material. What is magnesite flooring. Going back some 60 years or more magnesite was a product used quite widely in flooring especially for industrial premises as it was resistant to oil spillages.

The magnesite used to make the floors nice and flat was filled with sawdust and cork held together by a glue. Homes built all the way through the 1960s may also have magnesite flooring as it was still sometimes used up until about the 1970s. There are many benefits of having magnesite flooring. Magnesite flooring is electrically conductive and so an electrical resistance moisture meter will give a full scale damp reading even when the material is bone dry.

Pye pw and harrison hw. It s a water based product usually reddish pink in colour which was most commonly used as a floor finishing. Magnesite is a form of cement created through magnesium oxycholoride. Floors and flooring bre 2003.

Depending on the coloration added magnesite can mimic many other flooring materials. Because it s a wet mix that is workable after pouring it takes on some of the aesthetic potential of plaster. Magnesite floors were common in the 1960s mainly in sydney as a slab topping or an underlay to carpet and other forms of floor covering. What makes it different from normal cement is that fillers and aggregates such as wood chips or sawdust have been added into it.

Most magnesite flooring of the past was anywhere from 1 2 inch to 3 4 inch thick.