Specifying Protection for Liquid Screed From Follow-On Trades

A clear protection specification identifies the type of covering to be used, when it is to be installed relative to the pour, and how long it should remain in place. Breathable boards or sheeting are typically favoured over impermeable coverings that could trap moisture and slow drying.

It should also address point loading — trestles, ladders, scaffold towers and stacked materials can all create highly localised loads that a curing screed is not yet strong enough to resist. Load-spreading boards or exclusion of such loads should be specified where these risks are foreseeable.

Follow-on trades — particularly wet trades such as plastering or further concrete work — should be sequenced so they do not introduce water, debris or spillages onto the curing screed. Where sequencing cannot avoid this entirely, protection measures need to account for the specific contamination risk involved.

Responsibility for protection, and for making good any damage, should be set out clearly in the contract documents rather than left as an assumption between trades, since disputes over screed damage are far easier to resolve when responsibility was agreed upfront.

Door thresholds, service penetrations and floor-to-wall junctions are the areas most often marked up during snagging, since boarding and cutting-in work there is hardest to keep clean during the protected period.

Agreeing what counts as acceptable making good around these details before the pour keeps the final inspection about genuine damage rather than disputed opinion.