Laser Screed FM2 Flooring in Kashipur, Uttarakhand

The economics of laser screeding are straightforward: the machine, the crew and the set-up cost the same whether the bay is small or large, so the bigger and more open the floor, the better the method looks against the alternatives. Kashipur has a lot of that kind of building — long storage sheds, processing halls, despatch areas that run the length of a plant.

In those buildings the laser holds one level plane end to end, the boom reaches into the pour without side forms, and wide bays go down in a single operation. Fewer joints come out of it, which on a floor worked by forklifts all day is worth as much as the flatness itself — joints are where floors start to fail.

Where the specification names a free-movement class such as FM2, this is the normal way to build to it, with the finishing sequence and the survey planned as part of the same job.

The Terai belt is humid, and concrete does not care what time your programme says it is. High humidity slows evaporation from a fresh slab, which pushes back the point at which it is ready to float and ready to trowel — and getting that timing wrong is one of the few ways to lose flatness after the screed has already done its work correctly.

So the finishing window on a Kashipur pour is set by the slab, judged on the day, not by a schedule written a week earlier. During monsoon the same applies to the whole pour: protection, access for mixers across a wet site, and curing all have to be arranged rather than assumed. We would rather tell you that before the date is fixed than after the floor is down.