Screed (Estrich)
Screed is billed by the square metre but costs by the cubic metre. Between those two numbers stands the thickness — and that is where the money disappears.
How it is billed
Screed goes by the square metre at a stated thickness, insulation and membrane likewise by the square metre, edge and expansion strips by the running metre, priming by the square metre, grinding and milling separately. Pumping from the street and the pump standing time are items of their own, not a surcharge on the price per metre. The thickness belongs in the quote next to the square metres — without it the same item means two different things. Areas and volumes are worked out in the program itself: you enter the dimensions room by room, name every measurement your own way, and the total goes into the quote as a finished item with the breakdown — you can see where the figure came from.
What disappears on paper
What disappears is the difference between the thickness in the quote and the one you actually laid. Substrates are rarely level: five millimetres of fall across a flat adds several cubic metres of consumption, while the square metres on the invoice stay the same. The drying time disappears too — screed dries for weeks, and in that time you keep an eye on the site, drive over to check, and charge nobody for it. And the moisture measurement before the floor covering disappears: with no dated report, if the floor later lifts, it is on you.
Work it out yourself
Take the last screed. Check the thickness your quote states and work the cubic metres out from it. Then work out from the delivery notes how much material actually went in. Multiply the difference by the material price and add the hours spent levelling the substrate. Multiply by the number of flats in a year. That is the amount no quote holds, because nobody measured it.
Five minutes a day
A photo of the substrate before the pour — it shows the membrane, the insulation, the heating pipes and the joints. The thickness measured at several points and entered the same day. The moisture report with its date, before the floor layer arrives. In the evening: hours, material deliveries, the pump day. When somebody asks a year later why the floor is moving, everything sits in one place and carries a date.
What the program watches for you
When you work for a construction company, the program sets the reverse charge under §13b and watches the §48b certificate — without it your client must withhold fifteen per cent. It watches the instalment invoices, because you buy the material before the pour. It watches the warranty periods — under a VOB/B contract it will not accept less than four years, under a works contract governed by the German civil code less than five. With screed that weighs more than elsewhere: complaints arrive years later, when the floor has long been down. Additional work is kept as a variation with the date it was announced.
At the end of the year
Cement, anhydrite, insulation, pump and mixer hire, paid hours, kilometres — all recorded against the jobs. The annual accounts and the VAT returns read finished figures, and invoices under the reverse charge land in the right boxes by themselves.
What matters is entering things regularly — a thickness measured at several points and a dated moisture report defend you better than the best program.
