what type of flooring for a balcony ?

[Dr Dee]

Oldbones,
I renovated a dbl story house some years ago when I was fitter and more agile, but still had some dodgy moments getting large sheet material up. Ended up getting smart by putting 3 lengths of timber (ex formwork) to act as a sliding ramp and using an old sheet of plywood as a skid plate. It was fairly steep but worked like a charm and safe. Tie 2 ropes off to somewhere solid on the upper level, toss them down mid way between the ramp boards, place the plywood sheet on the rampwith the ropes behind, place the heavy sheet (do one at a time) on top of the plywood, toss the ends of the ropes back up top and then start pulling with one person per rope. The whole lot slides up, and you only have 1/4 weight per rope because it is doubled.

Hope this helps - simple and safe and worked for me.

cheers

[Wildman]

The panels are very strong, however they are still relatively brittle. Dont drag it on a corner or it will get damaged and if you dropped one, it will probably break. Also be aware that due to how they are constructed, if they are going to break, they will just snap without warning rather than fail gracefully like under reinforced concrete (all concrete should be under reinforced btw so the steel fails first and gives warning, cracks etc. Over reinforced concrete fails suddenly and quickly). You only have to worry about this during transport and installation, once in, they exceed the requirements for domestic floor loading as it is primarily designed for commercial applications.

You have the option to use 15mm if you have 450mm joists, it is lighter (by 5Kg/m2), however big sheets will be more likely to be damaged during installation and it is actually more expensive than the 18mm as it is used less.

My daughter laughed for ages when she saw me covered in tile dust and wearing a dust mask (once she realised it was me), hopefully she continues her interest in my garage work! She is only 4 months old so I still have some time....

Cheers
Ben