The floor is the least noticeable part of a building. But it’s also one of the most demanding. After all, it has to bear all of the loads caused by the residents and their visitors, perhaps even those due to equipment and heavy machinery mounted on it, and all of that for decades, in the ideal case! So it's no wonder that today’s screeds have long been high-technology products that need to be developed by chemists and laid by qualified experts.

There’s no doubt: anyone thinking about shooting a remake of the popular old black-and-white Edgar Wallace thrillers would be right on track in Schloss Kalbeck, a mansion situated close to the town of Weeze in the Lower Rhine region in germany. It’s a classic country house – thanks not least to renovation work carried out on the building in recent years. Yet today, anyone looking at the building, which was originally errected in 1906, would hardly imagine that modern chemistry has played a large role in its condition.