How We Made a Stamped Screed Floor

A Little Bit of Background

The Igbo people in South Eastern Nigeria are some of the most widely travelled group of people in Nigeria and even, perhaps Africa. It is for this reason that they have a saying, "Anywhere you go to and fail to find an Igbo person or a housefly, leave! No life exists there!"

However, it is more than a little strange that these group of migrants always find their way back home especially during the Christmas holidays. This is strange until you realise that no matter where they go, the Igbo people do not bury their dead anywhere but home. And home in this case means hometown or ancestral home.





It is perhaps due to this fact that most successful Igbo people tend to build country homes in their hometown. In most cases, these houses are lived in about two weeks every year. Seems like an awful waste of resources but then most people retire to their country home after active service or after they retire from their businesses.

When wealth finds its way home, the owner shall be known to all ~ An Igbo Saying

The building on which the following floor screening was done is one of such country homes built in my village for a business man who lives a few thousand miles away from his hometown. The floor is simple but elegant.

The Process

The first stage of this floor screeding was land-scaping making use of laterite or sharp sand to slope it to desired directions. In this case, the required slopes were so gentle that the floor seems completely flat, without slopes.








The second stage was measuring the surface area to be screeded and divide the space to desired design so that the strips of concrete would each have equal and uniform dimension when cast.

The aggregates for the batching was made up of 20mm coarse aggregate, 10mm coarse aggregate, sharp sand, cement and of course water.

The concrete was laid insitu. This is a Latin word which simply means in place or on site or in position. In other words, the concrete was not cast elsewhere and transported to its permanent position. The insitu concrete was laid in long rectangular strips with long channel hollow rectangular pipe used as range.





Once the concrete is mixed at design ratio, it's poured to the strip and tapped for compaction and also to let the concrete bleed.

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As the concrete was bleeding, a mixture dry black coloured cement and normal cement was spread evenly at the top and left to wet for a few moments before it is shined with a trowel.

The 3 feet line demarcation at the top of the black strip is achieved using trowel and angle tool for smooth finish

After finishing all the black strips, red strips become easier as there's no need for side ranging. The red strip is where the show is.
A hollow channel rectangular pipe was used to design the mould that will give the smaller rectangular strips on top of the red strip

The red cement was applied like the black cement but the difference is that the red cement was mixed with sand and water was added to form a flowing paste of cement. When the paste was spread on top of the bleeding concrete, the mould was dragged along the surface to give a smooth surface.





After all the processes is repeated to cover the surface, it is cleaned with water and polished. Here is the finished work.

This is how we made a Stamped Screed Floor. I hope this has been informative for you :).

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The pictures are original images taken with my cell phone.

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Thank you for visiting my blog.
It's your boy Kels
@churchboy