Screed drying time with underfloor heating

[umpljazz]

I understand I should allow around 1 day per mm of screed before I go ahead and lay a final floor finish. I wondered though if it's worth gradually turning up the underfloor heating to 'force dry' the screed and speed up the drying time?

Is this a known practice? If so, does it make much difference to drying times?

 

[crazydaze]

Using the UFH to dry the screed will almost certainly make no difference to the overall drying time of the floor, it just takes ages, about 4 weeks per inch of depth. We know this from experience when we had to repair a badly cemented floor before fitting a stickdown engineered wood, despite leaving the UFH on and despite being laid over a 20 year old slab, it still took nearly 3 months - as predicted - to dry enough to be able to bond the flooring.

When measuring for moisture, make sure you use a proper flooring damp meter like a protometer or hydrometer, eyesight is no use, and regulay damp meters will not measure the floor moisture content correctly.