What Is Magnesite Flooring

There are many benefits of having magnesite flooring.

What is magnesite flooring.

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. Pye pw and harrison hw. Now the glue was the problem because it was made of magnesium oxychloride. 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. It allows concretors to screed the floor slab without doing final finishing. Also a small lump when held in gas flame will glow brightly like a gas mantle at the edges. The magnesite material is simply poured out over the concrete raked out and trowell.

The magnesite used to make the floors nice and flat was filled with sawdust and cork held together by a glue. What makes it different from normal cement is that fillers and aggregates such as wood chips or sawdust have been added into it. Magnesite was applied to the top of concrete ground floors which resulted in reddish pink hued colored floors. Magnesite is a form of cement created through magnesium oxycholoride.

Because it s a wet mix that is workable after pouring it takes on some of the aesthetic potential of plaster. Made from calcined or burnt magnesite and various. 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. The added fillers actually make magnesite much more durable than cement.

Magnesite flooring consists of magnesium oxychloride which is a white asbestos material. Think of magnesite as a sort of plaster for the floor. Most magnesite flooring of the past was anywhere from 1 2 inch to 3 4 inch thick. Homes built all the way through the 1960s may also have magnesite flooring as it was still sometimes used up until about the 1970s.

It s a water based product usually reddish pink in colour which was most commonly used as a floor finishing.