How To Install Basment Subfloor Tile System

hi I'm Shannon from host improvements comm and I want to show you how to install a basement subfloor system system we're installing today is made out of basically two components placed together and they're in approximately two foot square pounds with a tongue-and-groove system to lock it all together so we've got the OSB topside so when it's sitting on the floor you're going to have the OSB to the top and then it's got a plastic base on the bottom with these these little raised portions that just give it a little bit of breathing room off the concrete so the idea is if you've got a bit of a damper basement you can put this down and this this raised area will will give you just a little bit of space underneath it so that your your concrete can breathe a little bit and hopefully get a better chance to dry out and and with that being plastic on the bottom as well there's really no food source down there for mold to start growing so so in this case we've got a damp basement we've pulled all the flooring out and are going to install this subfloor down before we build our interior walls you could can install it before or after the wall so it was just easier in this case to do it after or sorry before you don't need a lot of special tools to do this basically you're going to need a few few little wood spacers that we need to use along the walls and any other objects you want to have about a quarter inch space between any obstructions so I've just got some miscellaneous pieces here to work with these floorings as well when you purchase them you can buy shim kits so it's just a bunch of plastic pieces that you can stack and put underneath if you need to take out a little bit of you know a little spot or whatever in the floor so it would be stuck under there so as we get going in this I'm sure we'll come across a spot or two where we'll have to use those and then basically basic tools we're going to use some safety glasses we just need a hammer I've also grabbed this pry bar that I use for laminate flooring and we may need it just to help lock some pieces in I'm not sure and then the other item is just a scrap piece of wood to use against the edge of the panel's then you hit it with the hammer to slide the tongue-and-groove system together and this is just so yard banging up the edge of the panel and damaging it so so you know there's not like I said not nothing real special that you need most of the stuff you're going to all have written your region your home already so so when you go to figure this out if you're using this this type of system with these 2x2 panels they're slightly actually under I think the surface area actually measures 23 and a quarter I think inches square so you want to measure your room and figure out you know how many panels you need basically for this particular product they say to calculate each panel is being three point three square feet so if you get the square footage of the total area you're doing divide it by three point three that should give you the total number of panels you'll need and that's allowing for waste and not in most cases that's more than plenty but you can always return the parts you don't have or that you don't use so so we're going to get get started along this wall here before you start obviously we did some demo we pulled up the carpet the old underlay that sort of stuff and then vacuumed the floor really well so use your wet/dry vac and get rid of any dust or anything the main thing is we don't want any contaminants underneath it you know the whole idea here is to have nothing down there for a mold to grow on we've got a little bit of the under pad from the carpet that was here that we scraped it off the best we could but there's still a little bit of that there generally most of these under pads aren't really organic so the mold isn't going to eat it anyways but so you might notice when we get right down on the floor there's a few little spots of that also the floor that we've got here has some old glue residue on it from some old tiles that used to be down here I guess at one time again none of that seems to be spawning any mold that we can find so I don't feel it's necessary to remove it if you did have to remove it you're pretty much down to grinding the floor to get that off you could try using some thinners and strippers and things like that but you're just going to make a real smelly mess I think so grinding it would probably be the best way if you if you do have to get rid of something if you do have some lumps and bumps you want to work away at that and try to smooth that out or if you have some real dips you can use some self-leveling concrete in those to try to pre level things out climate eyes your panels for about 24 hours in in the room that you're going to be using them in and then you should be good to go so we're going to reset the camera get a few things out of the way here and start over here okay so like with most other flooring or anything that I usually do I try to start out along my longest wall if I can it just gives you a nice street distance to start out with the manufacturer of most these panels actually usually recommends placing the what would be the grooved side against your walls to start out with I have a bit of a problem with that because if I do that even with the tapping block I'm damaging this this tongue here sticking out every time I want to tap it without being real careful about trying to get up on an edge or something so I like to actually turn it the other way so that then when I'm putting the subsequent panels on and using my tapping block I'm right against this solid edge and there's way less chance I'm going to do any damage and I don't have to be real real particular about exactly where the block is so so I'm going to turn it that way I can't really see what difference it makes other than you know you might have a little bit more of a gap here because of the the tongue but generally speaking your flooring and your baseboard and everything else is going to cover that anyway so if you foresee any problems doing it this direction just install yours the other way okay so I've got these little spacers these spacers are only eight inch so I'm doubling them up to give us our quarter inch of room that we need against the this wall here these two walls I should say and then basically this will just push right in there now your room likely could be a little bit out of square or whatever so you might have to play with that a little bit and find a happy medium once you you know kind of get fitting everything together but you know try to start out with that quarter inch space also because of the height of our drywall we've got a little bit of a play there too we probably don't even really need that quarter inch space because we're gaining that under the drywall we've got half an inch there so anyways get your first piece just kind of laying where you want it grab your second piece slide the two together now before you really get it really forced into where you want to be you want to try to get things kind of flushed up or real close so that when you tap it into place and it locks together you don't have to beat the heck out of it lining everything completely rate up okay so we've got our second piece there I'm just going to lay my tapping block on the floor and then use the hammer against there it's kind of nice getting started here if you can put a little bit of weight on the first few pieces you've already done just to keep them from moving around on you okay so top it together do any little adjustments that you need to kind of get things flushed up like so so that's our first piece and again like I said because when you start out you're going to have things moving around so much easier just keep track of what you've already done here for the first couple rows make sure you aren't shifting anything too bad out of place if you really - you can use the odd fastener through this you know drill with a hammer drill and fastened down into the concrete but I wouldn't recommend getting too many the ideas this needs to float a little bit and expand and contract as it needs to just get some of this stuff on the way and I'm just going to continue on down this row and it's nice to just completely finish every row so we'll go right to the other end of the room make our cut there with whatever space is left if we've got a piece that's you know about six inches wider or more we can use that piece down here to start the next row because we've got these joints right here we want to make sure our next each each row after that staggers and those joints so that these don't line up from row to row and it just gives a little more strength to the floor so we'll see what we got down there you don't want to use usually too much less than six inches of a piece against the wall if you can if you can help it something to maybe check when you're doing your initial before you start measure your dimensions and just kind of estimate what you're going to have for a an end roll or for n roll pieces you know like in this case as we're moving across here if I measured it out not was going to be a two inch little piece over there I probably would have cut you know five inches off of this first roll against this wall so everything shifted over to make that piece bigger but in our case here works out pretty decent so so I'm just going to move right along and keep putting these together just always pay attention to your tongue and groove so that your orientating them the right way and don't have to take it apart it's it's not bad right in the beginning to take it apart but once you get a few together it can be a real pain so and all those spacers will get pulled out once we're completed I can see this this corner is a little out of square so it's given a little trouble with those shims down there but you just got to play with it okay so we'll we'll just move the camera and I'll just finish this row off you okay so as I've worked along here and I don't think I really mentioned it before when I'm putting the pieces down I'm just looking that they're kind of sitting flat and they aren't you know rocking a whole lot you're it's never going to be perfect but if you can get some of that you know the little dips out of there with these shims it's best so I've got a little bit of a low corner here these shims are designed that you just kind of stack together to you know make up whatever thickness you kind of need so I'm just going to see what kind of fits under there see a lot you can see how that took the rock out of there now it wasn't much but we'll help so that when people are walking in here you know they're not going to have those little soft spots it's going to feel like a soft spot sort of thinking so once you get the shim in just keep continuing on okay so now that we've got three down to the end and you see me along they're putting the odd shimmy and once I got to this end it was a little less less level or true so I've got to the end now now I can make a measurement here you know to the wall in a couple places see if it's even in this case it's 18 inches but remember you want to take a quarter inch at least off of there and once we get that piece cut you know you're going to have to kind of tip it in a little bit because you need to get it started in here you may even have to pull this one up a little bit just to help get it in there I'm going to allow actually just a little bit extra room here so I'm going to go probably 3/16 of an inch just to give myself that little bit more extra room to get that in so that measured 18 inch is tight so I'll just deduct my three sixteenths from that and cut my piece you can cut this on a table saw for the jigsaw with us with a circular saw anything like that and I recommend that you cut somewhere else you don't want to cut in this room because you're going to be constantly cleaning up that sawdust as you're working so in this case we're going to be cutting right outside right out in the shop so okay so I'm going to cut that piece so 18 yeah so actually that's going to give us a decent off piece to start that other end so I'm just going to go and cut this right now there's no real rocket science to that we're going to show you some cutting later on we've got to cut around a piece of wall that's out here in the middle so I'm going to go cut this quick piece here and bring it back in and put it in okay so I've got my piece cut here to width so we'll just try to get the two together I think earlier I said I was cutting off 3/16 I meant 5/16 in my case and I actually didn't have to lift up this one I thought I may have to you can see I've just got enough room there and I've got it in here and started and I give this a little bit of a wiggle hopefully I can get it started in enough to use my little bar my little red bar it's not quite enough room against the wall so I'm just going to hopefully pry it over a little with that okay so I got that and then what this bar will do is I me to hook in there and hit my hammer on here to close up this joint so you can see the joint still open a little bit like so and after we're we're flush there see how we are four okay so we looks like we've got a little bit of high spot back there so this corner is a little floating a little bit so we're going to need a shim here that's better so we should be alright and I need my spacers okay so I'm just now that I got the first row done what I like to do is go back and just look at it make sure everything stayed where I left it and nothing shifted out of place as far as at these joints everything stayed nice and flush there make sure it's back against my shims now if that wall is a little crooked or bowed or anything then you know I might have to stick the odd shim extra shim in where there's a space because I want this to stay straight so so we'll probably reposition the camera again we've got our piece that came off of there when I cut it it's a little under six inches I think it's five and a half or something yeah but that'll be wide enough we'll use it to start our next roll okay so we can use our our cutoff like I mentioned before to start out this next roll so we just want to get it start in there top it into place so about a quarter inch from the wall and then our next piece goes in when you're using these these shims underneath where was it somewhere here you can see I've got a little bit of a little bit of movement there one thing you got to play with a little bit if you put a shim in because you think you got too much movement just check further away because if it just made you know lift it up too high and there's movement somewhere else then you really don't need that shim so you know just make sure you check around that area after you've shimmed it to be sure it isn't just lifting the floor up and creating another problem so so that little bit of movement there like I said you're going to have some sometimes so you just got to play with that a little bit as you go and decide what's the best best situation for her the best amount of play least amount of play for the situation you have so okay so now this roll like I said before we're just trying to stagger these joints off by at least six inches so just put these panels in just like we were doing all the other ones except this time I'm not just locking into here I'm also having to lock it into there it will sets the wrong direction pay attention to what direction you're putting them so if you just kind of get it started in both if you can and then you'll have to use your tapping block in two couple different directions to get that in there just trying to get this shim in there so that doesn't move on us okay so just smack it around till you get things fitting the way you want it and then move on okay I can see as I'm moving along here I'm putting this piece in I'm actually opening these joints up just a bit a little bit isn't a big deal but I think part of the problem is where I've got my wall spacers I maybe will move them to where the joints are because where they are now it's allowing that joint to flex as I'm hitting this next roll against it so I'm just going to shift all those down a little bit so they're all right on a joint and that should keep me from having that problem anymore okay so we're just going to insert a couple of different situations where we've got to cut around some obstacles and you know how to kind of measure it so so right here we've got a transition where there's going to be a little bit of a jog back here to the existing carpet so I just want to get my piece real close I'm not I don't really have it stuck right in there but it's it's lined up and what's that giving me for a space between there we've actually got a quarter inch space there so that'll actually affect this measurement over here so if I just come straight off this wall you know this is the obstacle I'm cutting around that's where the wall is but now I have to remember that that piece is going to slide a quarter-inch that way plus I want a quarter inch of play here so I actually need to move this over 1/2 inch so we'll just mark line I'm going to scribble that one out so I don't cut the wrong one okay so that's that line there now the whole thing needs to slide over to whatever point we decided we wanted here for me I want this to go over from my tongue there I wanted to go over two and a mile two and a half inches so actually I should have started out with this against the wall where I wanted it that's going to change that two and a quarter inches okay so I'll measure along here two and a quarter and if we're actually cutting out this piece here so that this can slide right over okay so we've got that all measured around there we'll simply cut that out with a circular saw and then we'll be able to slide that over and should fit perfectly where we want it you might be just since we're right here you might be wondering you know what I'm going to do with this difference in elevation here well actually this these panels this particular type of panel is seven eighths of an inch thick so it's going to raise your existing floor up we don't have that panel over in this other room so there's going to be a transition between the two on top of here we're going with a laminate vinyl plank or saw a vinyl plank flooring so it's quite thin I think it's four or five or six mils or something like that going right on here so this will end up being slightly higher than this carpet edge by probably on eighth of an inch likely maybe even a quarter of an inch so along here I'll end up using a carpet bevel bar so it's just a flat piece of metal that gets fastened down here through the concrete and it just makes that transition kind of a bit of an angled transition from the carpet surface up to the top of the vinyl plank that we're using so so your situation could be different you could be putting carpet on here and carpet over there whatever you just got to use a transition strip there to make up that difference so okay so we've got this one we'll cut it and put it in after but I want to show you one other cut as well okay so we've worked our way across the better part of this room and now we've come to an obstacle here so we've got an existing partial existing wall in a doorframe so we've got to cut the next panel around it but before I could do that what I did was cut the trim and door jamb off so I just used a scrap piece of the same flooring subfloor and just set on the floor and use this orbital saw to cut that actually oscillating saw sorry and cut that off so that the new floor you can just get it slid right underneath there and it'll be much nicer fit so now we need to figure out how to cut this you might have a similar situation where you've got possibly a tell opposed in the way or something like that and it might even end up that that post you know is out in the middle of the sheet so what I would do in a case like that is I would you know measure it all out cut that hole and then run the piece of flooring actually through your table saw so that it is in two pieces that way you can kind of put one in and slide the other one in from the other side so in this case this isn't completely encompassed in this piece so we've got to basically cut a notch I would over here on this side so it's going to be a lot quite similar to what we did at the other on that last cut just getting myself lined up and close to the wall or the obstacle and what I want to do is just get basically a bit of a line here just as a guide to start out with just because I can't get radiant underneath there where I want to be so I'll readjust that line afterwards I know I've got to be away from this a little bit so that will be my actual line there and I've got a little leeway in this case too because there'll be another wall budding in here so they'll be actually half-inch drywall hanging off here so I can afford to be just a little bigger that way as well okay so on this on this first line I did here I'm just going to measure from this face back to the framing and I've got an inch and remember we want to quarter inch of space so I'll I'll just move this line back 3/4 of an inch so that's going to be there now I've got this kind of sitting on there I'll just measure what the difference is on the overlap here and that's how far I need to come in there looks like about four and three eighths plus I need that extra quarter so we'll go four and five eighths now obviously these measurements really don't mean anything probably to your project but I'm just trying to talk you through what my reasoning is okay so now I can move this away I'll move this line over so that's my cut line I don't need that one anymore and I'm going to do that that there so I'll just get a pencil line on there okay so I don't know if you can see the pencil lines by basically getting rid of a rectangular shape right there now this one will be a little tricky again we need to kind of slide it underneath there and then get it lined up with the tongues on on the other pieces with the grooves I should say and then pound it into place so I'm going to go cut this one out probably with the using a circular saw in the jigsaw is probably the best on here and then we'll bring it back and put it in place okay so we've just come out here to the shop and we're going to cut this little piece out that we just marked so the first cut I'm going to make is with the circular saw and I'll just plunge in and make that cut along the line there okay so that's one of the cuts and I could have used that really for this too but I'm going to use the jigsaw for these guys okay so that's that cut and then I'll just show you while we're in here basic cut on the table so I'll just straight cut for one of those n pieces so I've got the fence already set this right here is the piece that I wanted okay so we can take those back in and hopefully everything fits great okay so we're back inside we've got our piece here so again like I said this one will be a little trickier because we've got to get actually underneath here this with any luck at all so get things lined up it might fit okay so that drops down in there get all those to start in which it looks like they're going to okay so I'm probably well I definitely am bigger here than I need to be but with our flooring and stuff that's going to cover that so it should be okay but I probably could have been well that had the drop in though I probably still could have had this about an eighth inch smaller and this tongue still would have got passed and the end of it it's going to be alright like said there's a there's going to be a wall actually going across here pouring a bit of a hallway so that'll be fine okay so we got that in there we seem pretty solid I might need a shim back there when I move around to the other side but we'll deal with out at another point so that just gives you a bit of an idea cutting around an obstacle we're going to go back to this end so we can get the last little bit in and show you just finishing the up against the second wall there and then we'll be able to wrap things up okay so I've just measured and cut a couple pieces three pieces here to finish off against the wall so once you're you've worked your way across the room it's much like we had to do at the end there you just go to cut your nice so it will fit in there get it wiggled into position and that's where this bar comes in handy again shim back there the system will give you a little bit of a warmer floor as well at least they claim that and I would think it should be somewhat warmer you're getting isolated a little bit up off the concrete okay so just fit all your last pieces in there don't forget to make sure you leave yourself that quarter-inch space there I'll pop this last one in and then we'll do our wrap-up so I hope you found our subflooring in a basement video helpful maybe you've got a renovation coming up in the basement whether you're renting the whole thing or just doing a few rooms changing the flooring or something this is a possibility for you to be thinking about to kind of help you with a down floor or help you with possibly warming the floor up just a little bit so we tried to give you as many tips and hints along the way as we could to help speed up your process your learning curve when you do your project and hopefully it was helpful if we missed something or you're not sure of something or maybe you got a question about another project you got going on you can always check us out on our forum and you'll find that at on our website at house - improvements comm so you can go in the forum and post up whatever you want and I'll get an answer off to use as quickly as I can also if you're finding our videos helpful you could also go to patreon which we have a link here in the bottom description but you could go to patreon and plad make us pledge and it just helps us out a little bit in producing these videos that you've come to hopefully enjoy so besides that if you aren't already sick of me after all that then you can follow us as well on Facebook and Twitter and just see what we have to say every day during the week I try to make a post on each one of those so so anyways I hope that it was worth watching today and thanks thanks again

Channel: HouseImprovements

Views: 129,481

Rating: 4.9197116 out of 5

Keywords: basement, subfloor, dricore, cool, floor, concrete, warm

Id: K31nXiOEWFg

Length: 34min 7sec (2047 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 10 2016