Basement Floor Options to Prevent Moisture

does your basement look something like this if you're finishing your basement now or plan to then you're going to have to make decisions about the kind of finished flooring that you're going to put down now technically you can put down just about any finished flooring you want in your basement but i'm here to warn you that some of those choices cause problems so this video is all about my favorite and recommended three finished flooring options for basements they offer unique advantages and i want to explain them now so you can make a more informed choice the first option i want to talk about is carpeting it's actually not my personal favorite i don't like carpeting anywhere in a house upstairs or in the basement but it is very popular with people and so that's why i want to mention it up front it's popular because you get a soft surface and it's a little bit warmer too so all of those things are great but you need to understand something and it has to do with a dynamic that often sets in that's difficult to understand ahead of time but really damaging when it does finally set in so what you need before carpet goes down is some sort of a basement subfloor now here you've got some basement subfloor panels this is the dry corp brand they're widely available excellent quality they work really well but this is what you need to properly put down any sort of a carpet in your basement and the reason is because of something that's hard to pick out ahead of time now this is a cross section here you can see the carpet and then here is some underpad and this is a cross section of a concrete floor this is the way a lot of carpet goes down on basements and it causes problems so imagine for a moment it's summertime and there's warm humid air in the basement it is going to make its way through the carpet and the underpad neither of those materials have what it's take have what it takes to stop the movement of air through them so if the air is in the basement it's going to get through carpet and underpad and it's going to come in contact with the cool concrete floor now when that happens there's a very good chance that the air will cool down to the point where condensation occurs within the carpet under pad it won't be enough that you can tell that it's wet it's not going to be squishy underfoot or anything like that but it doesn't take very much moisture to trigger mold and mildew growth and that's often what happens in fact this dynamic is the leading cause of musty basement smells but this is also where a basement subfloor comes in handy now here we have a similar cross section except there's a basement subfloor panel in place and that's what you see here this is the top surface that you would see this particular panel has a layer of foam on it they're really two different kinds one has a dimpled plastic layer underneath that creates a little air space and then this creates an insulated layer now the other kind is insulative too this is a little more insulative but in both cases what we have is a blockage so a blockage of the warm moist air from touching the concrete so if it tries to get in it's going to get through the carpet and the under pad eventually it's going to make it through this oriented strand board that's here but it's not going to make it through the foam so the warm moist air stops here at this at this spot and that means it never gets cool enough to condense because it never comes in contact with the concrete floor so sounds simple but a basement subfloor makes all the difference in an application like this uh as well as the next flooring option which happens to be my favorite for basements now this flooring is luxury vinyl plank and i like it a lot it is i think one of the very best for basements first of all as you can see it delivers an authentic wood grain look it looks terrific because luxury vinyl plank and its cousin luxury vinyl tile are inorganic then they're not going to warp or crack or promote the growth of any kind of nasty stuff that you don't want growing in your house so very good for that it's also extremely tough it's much much tougher than a hardwood floor you're actually you'd have to have a difficult time damaging this stuff so it stands up really really well there's another advantage and it's harder to understand but it's really quite huge and that's that this stuff is flexible which is a great advantage for basements so this is a piece of luxury vinyl plank and look at how easily that bends what that means is that unlike other similar flooring like laminate for instance this can follow small undulations in the floor so whereas laminate flooring is is good and tough for basements and it's kind of inorganic as well but it's rigid the pieces are rigid so the floor needs to be very flat and it can be quite a pain to flatten the basement floor concrete basement floor that is they're often not poured with extreme precision so the the laminate option can be a real pain but the luxury vinyl plank is going to work really well for you it's just going to follow any undulations that are there it doesn't have to be fastened down either this is a floating floor that clicks together so that's another advantage over real hardwood it's tougher it's better suited to the basement conditions it also it doesn't need to be fastened in it and it floats and conforms to any unusual shapes in the floor so great stuff but it does need to be installed over a subfloor again for similar reasons to what we saw with the carpeting and also increasing comfort so here's some basement subfloor panels going down this is the kind that has the dimpled bottom layer so there's an actual air space there and the plastic stops the downward movement of of warm moist air so it blocks that condensation as well as providing more comfort and even a little bit of drainage capabilities should you get a little bit of moisture underneath there now here you can see the same subfloor panels you can see that they're raised a bit off the ground now sometimes if the basement floor the concrete is is not flat enough it will cause these tiles to wobble so the dry core system comes with shims that work really well and you can put in one or two or three or more in a low spot to bring it up and stop it from wobbling and just make it more solid my third recommended finished basement floor option is ceramic tiles but i need to explain a few things what you're seeing here now is a cross section of a system called ditra heat it's offered by a german tile accessory company called schluter they do by far the best job in the world that i've ever seen for in-floor electric in-floor heating underneath ceramic tiles if you want a really toasty basement floor insulation is going to get you part way there but it's not going to get you all the way there if you want to actually walk around in your bare feet and enjoy the warmth you're going to need something like this and what you've got here is this is the tiles this is the thinset mortar that actually glues the tile to this membrane here this is the ditra heat membrane it's an uncoupling membrane which allows a small amount of side to side movement of the tiles themselves relative to the subfloor and that can go a long way to preventing cracks now the the ditra system can be used on its own without heating cables but what you see here are electric heating cables they come on a spool when you buy the system and you can snap them into the the uncoupling membrane grid that you see here this is a wonderful feature because it lets you customize the installation of heating cables for your application which is something no other system provides to the same extent as this so you don't have to put your in-floor heating under places that'll have appliances or a shower stall or you know wherever you don't need heat you don't need to install heat now schluter does offer an option with the ditra heat here it has a little bit of a sort of a fuzzy fabric insulative backing on it and it does provide some insulation but when you're installing this over top of a basement floor with that great big concrete slab underneath i strongly recommend that you do more as far as insulation goes and that's what this stuff is here this is called kerdi board it's also made by schluter and it's an amazing substance it's it's foam it's a rigid foam sheet but it's dense enough that you can put this on the floor on your concrete floor and then you can put tiles and your ditra heat system right on top of it it's dense enough that it's still going to support the tiles even when you walk on this thing so that and it's also offers a lot of insulative properties so you're gonna you're gonna direct all of that in-floor heating upwards where you want it and you're not gonna lose any significant amount downwards down into the concrete slab now you can see here that there's a fabric on here there's the same thing underneath that fabric it's bonded to the foam and it's specially made to bond to thin set mortar so the same thing that is used to secure tiles that's what you'd use to secure this foam to the floor the concrete floor and it's also what you'd use to secure the ditra heat membrane and then in turn the tiles that go on top you can see it's got a grid pattern here so it's kind of easy to lay things out and keep things aligned it just works really well if you want the ultimate in warm basement floors then some sort of electric heating is going to be the thing and you will definitely need insulation for that so that's where i recommend this now just to finish up you know this is kind of a typical scene of a basement being finished you've got to have something against the concrete in most cases that's the subfloor panels i was talking about if you want heat then you might want to go with some sort of special foam product but bottom line is that concrete's got to be covered in some way before that finished flooring goes down

Channel: Bailey Line Road

Views: 79,525

Rating: 4.8304634 out of 5

Keywords: basement floor options, basement floor, basement flooring, basement flooring on concrete, basement flooring insulation, basement flooring ideas, basement flooring options, basement floor insulation on concrete

Id: m1Pb5yMLPes

Length: 11min 47sec (707 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 23 2020