Floor Leveling Mortar Quantity Estimation in High-Rise Buildings

Concrete floors often present severe surface regularity requirements for flooring installation. Floor regularity is normally an evaluation of the differences between the points' elevation on the real surface with respect to an ideal reference plan. The surface regularity is defined and controlled regarding two characteristics. The first one, which is called (FF) ''floor flatness,'' evaluates the surface regularity over a short distance. Secondly, (FL) ''floor levelness'' evaluates the surface regularity over a longer distance. Self-leveling mortars are commonly used to increase the flatness and levelness of concrete floors and improve their surfaces. The American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) provides guidelines (i.e., FF and FL limits) for floor leveling. However, these guidelines do not give an estimate for self-leveling mortar needed to achieve an acceptable concrete floor surface. As a result, flooring contractors do not usually provide a cost estimate for floor leveling. This situation places general contractors at a high risk of submitting a lower bid during the bidding process. Therefore, there is a need to develop regression (mathematical) models that could predict, based on FF and FL testing, the number of self-leveling mortar bags needed. In the proposed work, regression models were developed for the predicting the number of self-leveling mortar bags using FF and FL testing. Limited research is available for using FF and FL testing to predict the amount of floor leveling needed on a project currently. Floor leveling has caused significant budget overruns for general contractors over the years. A multifamily high-rise project was used as a case study to generate the FF and FL testing data for the development of the prediction models.