Liquid screed for extensions on St Albans semis
An extension floor has one hard constraint: it must finish level with the house it joins. Inter-war and post-war semis in St Albans were built with their own floor heights, and a kitchen extension or knock-through has to meet them without a step. That is where liquid screed helps. It self-levels across the whole room, so the finished height is set by the laser and the pour rather than by hand, and SR1 or SR2 flatness under a 2m straightedge is readily reached.
It is also thinner. Floated over insulation in a house, liquid screed can go down from about 35mm where sand and cement would want about 65mm, and those spare millimetres can go into thicker boards underneath while the finished height stays where the old floor dictates.
Flats are the other strong case. With 26% of St Albans homes being flats, there are many upper floors where barrowing sand and cement up a stairwell would be slow and heavy. Instead, the hose climbs the stairs to the flat's front door and the whole apartment is poured in a single visit.
Pumped mixes come in two families, calcium sulphate and cement based, and which one suits a St Albans room comes down to what the room is for and what will cover it. Drawings that call for a CA grade are dealt with on our St Albans anhydrite page. Torn between this and the hand-tamped option your builder may have priced? Our guide to choosing between liquid and traditional screed sets the two side by side.
Getting the pump hose into a St Albans house
The pump stays outside, and its hose is laid through the house to the room being poured. Where there is a driveway, the lorry and pump stand on it and the job is simple. On terraced streets with permit parking, the pump may have to sit on the road, so tell us about bays, restrictions and any shared passage when you ask for a price. The hose can run along a hallway or up a staircase, provided the route is cleared and protected.
Three jobs must be finished before the lorry pulls up: edge strip fixed round each wall, taped seams on the sheet that covers the insulation, and a dam across every doorway. We go round and check all three before the hose is filled; the kit itself is described under pumped screed delivery.
Speed on the day is not the same as speed to finish. You can walk across it early, yet most coverings still have to wait until moisture readings fall below what the flooring maker allows. As a rule of thumb, each of the first 40 millimetres takes about a day, and the rate slows beyond that; how long screed takes to dry goes into the detail. If the ground floor is heated, the heating can often help dry it once the schedule allows.
Liquid Screed prices in St Albans
Liquid screed: £24 to £31 per m² supplied and laid (MyJobQuote, August 2026), so £960 to £1,240 for 40 m². MyJobQuote does not say whether these figures include VAT. See our floor screeding cost guide or screed calculator.
Who lays your liquid screed in St Albans
K & B Screeding’s own team, led by director Donatas Bardisevicius. Founded 2019, company 12298780.
See what customers say in our Google reviews and on our testimonials page.
Liquid Screed from Slough to St Albans
As the crow flies, our yard in Slough is about 20.1 miles from St Albans, which lies to the north-east. Postcodes here include AL3, AL4 and AL1, and Harpenden (4.5 miles), Hatfield (5.2 miles), Hemel Hempstead (5.7 miles) and Welwyn Garden City (6.7 miles) are close by.
More on liquid screed, part of our screeding services.
