Designing Buildings - The Construction Wiki

Search

Subjects

Tools / info

Edit this article

Last edited 27 Oct 2025

Temporary flooring options

If you’re faced with an uneven ground surface and don’t want to go to the expense of having a permanent base laid for a temporary solution, there are a number of temporary flooring options.

The budget option is to have a plastic portable floor (similar to those used at festivals and events to create pathways), which simply lays to your existing surface like this one which was installed at the temporary cruise line baggage hall at Liverpool.

This system works well on level surfaces and is capable of withstanding 2.5tonne forklift trucks. It’s also very quick to install and relatively cheap to hire.

The biggest downside with this type of floor is it can lift in extreme heat (which we don’t get a lot of in the UK) and of course, if you get any water ingress due to sloping ground, the water will run across the top of the portable floor.

A better option can be a ‘heavy-floor’ system which is designed to level the ground and has the added benefit of acting as the base for the temporary building, so there is no need to penetrate the ground to anchor the building into place.

The image above, shows a temporary building installed on top of a ‘heavy-floor’ on a grassed area.

These are used extensively when temporary buildings are supplied to power stations and oil refineries when they are used as site workshops and offices.

It can also be used for car show rooms and retail areas as seen here, at a temporary Pret-A-Manger coffee lounge.

The best feature of this floor is that as it is a sub-structure system, it lifts the entire building off the existing ground surface, so any water runs underneath and it guarantees a level surface.

It is limited in its weight baring capacity to 500kg’s m² so it is not feasible to use it for fork lift trucks or heavy palletised goods.

It is possible to run a pump truck across it, so providing fork lift access is not needed, this floor system is a very fast and effective way to create a solid level base, when the existing ground surface is either too uneven or there is only a grassed or hardcore area.

In some situations a raised concrete base might be better, but if the intention is only to use the temporary building for a few months, as opposed to years, then a new concrete base would probably be cost prohibitive.

Author bio: Sophia writes for Smart Space, Britain’s leading specialist in flexible building solutions since 1985.