Basement subfloor review and install - Drybarrier

hey guys welcome back to the channel uh today we're in the basement we are starting a basement finishing series so what we're gonna do with the series is basically start from the ground up and today we're going to be focusing on subfloor so guys why a subfloor is it necessary no but concrete naturally has moisture in it and not all basements are designed to be finished this one's probably three years old and they do say that it takes two to three years for the moisture to come out of the concrete naturally but there's always the chance of moisture to be present so taking a look at this basement we've got ruffin plumbing for a bathroom we've got a vapor barrier underneath the slab which is designed to keep the groundwater from coming up through the concrete so it's got newer features that are are a little more friendly for finishing the basement it's not like your older 70s or 80s basement where you don't have the technology the house on the outside has a membrane on the foundation so it is somewhat water resistant so reason why we we chose to go with the subfloor is just to mitigate any instances where there may be damp areas of concrete and ruining our carpet ruining our flooring we don't want to do that so we chose to go this route so besides the moisture guys one of the main reasons why we're deciding to do this is for the thermal break that these these subfloor panels provide so so take a look on the back side of this particular dry core panel you got these little stubs this is going to leave an air gap and this is going to allow air to flow underneath any dampness or moisture underneath this subfloor panel is going to stay underneath it basically the air gap is going to give you a warmer top surface than than it would be on bare concrete so that's the main reason the thermal break is going to just provide a warmer floor we're also doing this basement for 30 40 years we're not trying to do it for 10 years and have to redo some of the materials because they're soaking up a mildew and potential mold problems we're trying to do this for the long term and i feel myself that this is the product that's going to help us get there so the last thing i'll touch on guys is um we're going to be framing on top of the subfloor material that's going to keep our bottom plates off of the concrete surface it's going to keep the moisture below the wall framing and we have our barrier if if the basement happens to flood or get enough water to bury the bottom of the wall well we've got bigger problems so the nice thing is our framing is going to be off the concrete it's going to be high and dry i just want to mention that that's that's definitely a benefit of going this route so real quick um just a couple options out there that are that are on the market dry core is one of the products that are out there it comes with a couple versions you got regular dry core which is the osb top layer tongue and groove with the plastic poly base on it then you got the r value dry core where you have the osb top layer tongue and groove and you have insulation still got the grooves on the back still has the air gap tech that comes with it get a little bit more warmth with this product the one that we're really interested in is this dry barrier product which is very similar it has a dimpled base still has the air gap on the bottom but it doesn't have the organic osb layer this product is gonna do the same thing keep the moisture underneath the flooring where it belongs it's gonna allow the air to move through and it's also gonna allow things to dry up if we do have any water events to deal with so there's a fourth one too there's a dimpled membrane called dmx that's on the market you can roll out dmx across your slab and you can put osb tongue and groove on top sheets tap con screws to hold that down so essentially you're creating this scenario where you have like a dmx plastic product and an osb on the top we took a look at that it's it's a good system it was a good system when osb was 13 a sheet now that osb is 50 to 60 dollars a sheet in today's market it's just not economical so let's talk uh quick about about the dry core product um great subfloor they range in height from three quarters of an inch thick to one inch thick so that was a consideration because not every basement has a nine foot ceiling height or ten foot ceiling height um when you're trying to conserve ceiling height and you don't want your bulkheads to feel too low taking a look at the difference the dry barrier product is 3 8 of an inch thick so there there's you know by the time you do your finished flooring whether it's carpet or laminate or vinyl plank or tile uh all these things come into play especially uh around your staircase when you're dealing with a one inch thick uh subfloor material don't forget you're you're shortening that first rise of your of your basement stair so these are all considerations again nothing wrong with a dry core to me it just i didn't want to give up the ceiling height we don't have a super high ceiling down here and uh this dry barrier product it seemed to fit the bill a little bit better so let's go over this dry barrier as i said before it's got the air gap but what what intrigues me about this is is look at this very flexible so we've got a fairly new slab that's nicely finished here but if you have a basement with any variations in the floor they say up to a quarter inch to me this is the product that's gonna take that shape a little bit better than these these typical osb panels they're they're a lot more rigid and they're not gonna have to give in them so a couple differences here guys this dry core panel i'd be using a table saw to cut this or a skill saw lots of dust lots of debris you're cutting through osb this dry barrier they say you can cut it with a utility knife or a pair of shears a pair of snips so very intriguing the the ease of cutting the the less airborne dust when you're trying to finish your basement to me i'm not cleaning all the time it's a fast quick install it still has a tongue and groove system it has these snaps and it has these grooves that receive the snaps so to me very similar in the way it locks and hooks together again a little bit thinner and to me a lot simpler to work with so in in this comparison let's let's talk about two inches of water in a basement if if the dry core product is getting moisture on this osb it's basically garbage uh you're not going to be reusing that osp is somewhat water resistant but it is going to swell and you're going to end up tossing that out this dry barrier product from what i see what i've seen so far it gets wet you dry it off you clean it off you re use it so to me thinking about insurance costs and just just basically what's trapped underneath your flooring mold mildew this this to me is is a better choice now all these panels are fairly portable i mean this is a two by two panel it's fairly light i imagine if you had a stack of 50 of these it would be it'd be a fairly big stack what they do with the dry barrier it comes in these boxes and these kits of eight really not much to it what i like about it is uh throw it in the back your car you can probably throw in enough to to do your basement in a couple trips to the store and it's it's nicely packaged for you it doesn't weigh a lot anybody can move this product around so the simple way to figure out how much of this do you need for your basement take your square footage of your space of your room of your of your entire basement area that you're going to finish and divide that square footage by 3.3 in the case of the dry barrier that's going to give you the quantity of tiles that you need to finish your project it allows for a little bit of waste in your cutting with that calculation and that's that's what we did and how we figured out we got roughly 900 to 950 square feet down here that we're going to finish so that's the calculation we we use we divided that by 3.3 and we came up with our number that we had to purchase for the product so as always let's go over what we're going to need to do this project we have our h1 olfa a nice heavy-duty cutter they say we can use this to cut we're going to find out we've also got as a backup some aviation snips these are 90-degree snips which i think are going to work decently i'll put links to uh products in the description as as normal and for the dry barrier material we have some blue tuck tape that's going to be used to seal the seams that's one step that is additional on dry barrier versus the dry core you don't need to seal your seams with this tongue and groove system but in order to have a 100 vapor barrier on the on the dry barrier product you've got to run your tuck tape pretty straightforward i didn't mind that let's go through the steps guys uh step one uh we want to vacuum the surface we want to vacuum the concrete clean up any dust uh any debris uh we don't want to trap anything under the subfloor so let's uh let's start with that [Music] all right we got our first box here we're gonna open that up we are going to start along our straight back wall that's the first time that's the first area that we're gonna lay tiles uh so that means that we're gonna be laying this groove edge against the wall a few tiles laid out here i'm going to show you how these go together so i just want to show you how these are supposed to go together dry core's tongue and groove like i said before these things have these little stubs on them and they go into these receiver grooves so let's just they say it's pretty straightforward let's take our panels and line them up and they just click together so now we have a start of our of our row so again we're starting on an outside wall and we're going to be putting this grooved edge against the wall not the not the stud end but with the groove edge against the wall so we're going to go ahead and we're going to start by doing our first now i happen to have these little plastic spacers um so we're gonna put them in between the tile and the plate that's going to give us our uh our gap that we need okay we're just going to continue all the way along right these panels are designed to go in line with each other or you can stagger them like like a bricklaying pattern and there are provisions in each of these put a tap con screw and a corner here and there to hold it in place once our walls are on top these aren't going anywhere but for now i'm going to do this in this offset bricklayed pattern i think it's going to give it a little more stability so there it snapped one in and i'm halfway in between tiles and now i'm gonna attempt to slide this in it's kind of nice because with these grooves you can slide the panel around a bit so you can lock one side in and then pull it and click the other side that actually works pretty good all right let's go ahead and see how easy this stuff cuts i got a bit of a straight edge here we're not going to get too fancy with this but i've got the tile basically in place so i'm going to just score the board where that mark is i'm going to line up where the tile would be locked in place and i'm going to score this dimension here basically using my area now they say beauty of this is you can score it with a utility knife and basically snap the tile off let's give that a try i'll take my snips see this cuts real easy there's my cut mark and now we're just going to see if it breaks oh yeah see there's my cut and basically this tile is ready to go in perfect good fit easy to work with like they say no mess no dust not much to clean up [Music] hey guys we uh we got our subfloor all laid out for this one area that we're working on real straightforward to put together everything snaps together real clean so now we're gonna do the final step and that is to put vapor barrier tape along each joint so uh since these joints don't all run in rows i've got a little more taping to do but overall i like that it feels like it's a more it's more put together it's solid so we got our blue tuck tape and as i understand it um this tuck tape has a little more adhesive and it is designed and approved for vapor barrier it's also recommended for this installation because we are trying to seal up and create that thermal break so we're simply going to take our tape line it up on the center of our joint and i'm going to basically roll this out about one panel at a time and then make sure i'm pressing it down as we go [Music] [Music] so we got to do each panel individually with the cross taping just because of the stagger but make it nice and clean just like that all right guys there you have it uh we're going to end the video here i'm going to go ahead and finish taping off all the joints i have left and continue laying the subfloor hopefully that gives you some good tips on putting down this dry barrier subfloor i mean all i can say is lightweight flexible easy to install simple to cut not a lot of dust and debris full thermal break on your floor full vapor barrier with a tape pretty good product so we'll give you a further update when uh when we start putting flooring on top of this and we take it to and framing on top as well again thanks for watching appreciate you tuning in and don't forget to like and subscribe for more diy content and more videos with this basement finishing series and we'll catch in the next one [Music] you

Channel: J of All Trades

Views: 1,874

Rating: 4.8571429 out of 5

Keywords: diy, subfloor, basement, thermal break, drybarrier, air gap

Id: fiWUOiGTz7s

Length: 16min 40sec (1000 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 25 2021