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Basement Floor Options to Prevent Moisture
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Jan 25, 2024
Finish a _beautiful basement_ like an *expert* (no experience required) š baileylineroadlearning.com/p/how-to-finish-a-basement š Learn about various basement floor options, why moisture forms in some basement situations, and how you can prevent it. READ MY POPULAR ARTICLES ABOUT: Polyurethane Finish - https://bit.ly/powerbuffing DIY Hoop House Plans - https://bit.ly/hoophouseplans Submersible Pump Installation - https://bit.ly/pumpinstallation Air-Drying Wood Tips - https://bit.ly/wooddrying How to Build a Table - https://bit.ly/tablebuilding How to Stain a Deck - https://bit.ly/deckstain Choosing Waterproof Outdoor Glue - https://bit.ly/exterioradhesives How To Build A Wheelchair Ramp - https://bit.ly/wheelchairrampplans SUBSCRIBE: http://bit.ly/BLRchannel WATCH MY POPULAR VIDEO: How to Cut Perfect Miter Joints https://youtu.be/0wnjJ-Xi5FU
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Does your basement look something like this? If you're finishing your basement
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now or plan to, then you're going to have to make decisions about the kind of
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finished flooring that you're going to put down. Now technically you can put
0:13
down just about any finished flooring you want in your basement, but I'm here
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to warn you that some of those choices cause problems. So this video is all
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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
0:33
more informed choice. The first option I want to talk about is carpeting. It's
0:38
actually not my personal favorite. I don't like carpeting anywhere in the
0:42
house, upstairs or in the basement, but it is very popular with people and so
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that's why I want to mention it up front. It's popular because you get a soft
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surface and it's a little bit warmer too. So all of those things are great, but you
0:57
need to understand something and it has to do with a dynamic that often sets in
1:03
that's difficult to understand ahead of time but really damaging when it does
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finally set in. So what you need before carpet goes down is some sort of a
1:13
basement subfloor. Now here you've got some basement subfloor panels. This is
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the Dricorp 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
1:31
carpet in your basement and the reason is because of something that's hard to
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pick out ahead of time. Now this is a cross-section. Here you can see the
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carpet and then here is some under pad and this is a cross-section of a
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concrete floor. This is the way a lot of carpet goes down on basements and it
1:52
causes problems. So imagine for a moment it's summertime and there's warm humid
1:57
air in the basement. It is going to make its way through the carpet and the
2:02
under pad. Neither of those materials have what it takes to stop the movement of air through them. So if the air is in the basement it's going
2:14
to get through carpet and under pad and it's going to come in contact with the
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cool concrete floor. Now when that happens there's a very good chance that
2:24
the air will cool down to the point where condensation occurs within the
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carpet under pad. It won't be enough that you can tell that it's wet. It's not
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going to be squishy underfoot or anything like that but it doesn't take
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very much moisture to trigger mold and mildew growth and that's often what
2:43
happens. In fact this dynamic is the leading cause of musty basement smells
2:49
but this is also where a basement subfloor comes in handy. Now here we have
2:56
a similar cross-section except there's a basement subfloor panel in place and
3:02
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. There are really two different kinds
3:10
One has a dimpled plastic layer underneath that creates a little air
3:15
space and then this creates an insulated layer. Now the other kind is insulative
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too. This is a little more insulative but in both cases what we have is a blockage
3:28
So a blockage of the warm moist air from touching the concrete. So if it tries to
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get in it's going to get through the carpet and the under pad. Eventually it's
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going to make it through this oriented strand board that's here but it's not
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going to make it through the foam. So the warm moist air stops here at this
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spot and that means it never gets cool enough to condense because it never
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comes in contact with the concrete floor. So sounds simple but a basement
4:01
subfloor makes all the difference in an application like this. As well as the
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next flooring option which happens to be my favorite for basements. Now this
4:12
flooring is luxury vinyl plank and I like it a lot. It is I think one of the
4:19
very best for basements. First of all as you can see it delivers an authentic
4:25
wood grain look. It looks terrific. Because luxury vinyl plank and its
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cousin luxury vinyl tile are inorganic then they're not going to warp or crack
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or promote the growth of any kind of nasty stuff that you don't want growing
4:44
in your house. So very good for that. It's also extremely tough. It's much much
4:51
tougher than a hardwood floor. You're actually you'd have to have a difficult
4:57
time damaging this stuff. So it stands up really really well. There's another
5:03
advantage and it's harder to understand but it's really quite huge and that's
5:08
that this stuff is flexible. Which is a great advantage for basements. So this is
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a piece of luxury vinyl plank and look at how easily that bends. What that means
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is that unlike other similar flooring like laminate for instance this can
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follow small undulations in the floor. So whereas laminate flooring is is good
5:34
and tough for basements and it's kind of inorganic as well but it's rigid. The
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pieces are rigid so the floor needs to be very flat and it can be quite a pain
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to flatten a basement floor concrete basement floor that is they're often not
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poured with extreme precision. So the the laminate option can be a real pain but
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the luxury vinyl plank is going to work really well for you. It's just going to
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follow any undulations that are there. It doesn't have to be fastened down either
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This is a floating floor that clicks together. So that's another advantage
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over real hardwood. It's tougher. It's better suited to basement conditions. It
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also it doesn't need to be fastened in it and it floats and conforms to any
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unusual shapes in the floor. So great stuff but it does need to be installed
6:25
over a subfloor again for similar reasons to what we saw with the
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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
6:43
actual air space there and the the plastic stops the downward movement of
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warm moist air so it blocks that condensation as well as providing more
6:55
comfort and even a little bit of drainage capabilities should you get a
6:58
little bit of moisture underneath there. Now here you can see the same subfloor
7:04
panels. You can see that they're raised a bit off the ground. Now sometimes if the
7:11
basement floor, the concrete, is not flat enough it will cause these tiles to
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wobble. So the Dricor system comes with shims that work really well and you can
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put in one or two or three or more in a low spot to bring it up and stop it from
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wobbling and just make it more solid. My third recommended finished basement
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floor option is ceramic tiles but I need to explain a few things. What you're
7:40
seeing here now is a cross-section of a system called Ditra Heat. It's offered by
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a German tile accessory company called Schluter. They do by far the best job in
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the world that I've ever seen for electric in-floor heating underneath ceramic tiles. If you want a really toasty basement floor, insulation is going
8:06
to get you part way there but it's not going to get you all the way there. If
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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
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tiles. This is the thin set mortar that actually glues the tile to this membrane
8:26
here. This is the Ditra Heat membrane. It's an uncoupling membrane which allows
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a small amount of side-to-side movement of the tiles themselves relative to the
8:39
subfloor and that can go a long way to preventing cracks. Now the Ditra
8:45
system can be used on its own without heating cables but what you see here are
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electric heating cables. They come on a spool when you buy the system and you
8:55
can snap them into the the uncoupling membrane grid that you see here. This is
9:01
a wonderful feature because it lets you customize the installation of heating
9:05
cables for your application which is something no other system provides to
9:11
the same extent as this. So you don't have to put your in-floor heating under
9:16
places that will have appliances or a shower stall or you know wherever you
9:21
don't need heat you don't need to install heat. Now Schluter does offer an
9:27
option with the Ditra Heat here. It has a little bit of a sort of a fuzzy fabric
9:32
insulative backing on it and it does provide some insulation but when you're
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installing this over top of a basement floor with that great big concrete slab
9:43
underneath I strongly recommend that you do more as far as insulation goes and
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that's what this stuff is here. This is called KERDI-BOARD. It's also made by
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Schluter and it's an amazing substance. It's foam. It's a rigid foam sheet but
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it's dense enough that you can put this on the floor on your concrete floor and
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then you can put tiles and your Ditra Heat system right on top of it. It's
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dense enough that it's still going to support the tiles even when you walk on
10:15
this thing. And it also offers a lot of insulative properties. So
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you're going to direct all of that in-floor heating upwards where you want
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it and you're not going to lose any significant amount downwards down into
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the concrete slab. Now you can see here that there's a fabric on here. There's
10:37
the same thing underneath. That fabric, it's bonded to the foam and it's
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specially made to bond to thin-set mortar. So the same thing that is used to
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secure tiles. That's what you'd use to secure this foam to the floor, the
10:53
concrete floor, and it's also what you'd use to secure the Ditra Heat membrane
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and then in turn the tiles that go on top. You can see it's got a grid pattern
11:02
here so it's going to be easy to lay things out and keep things aligned. It
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just works really well. If you want the ultimate in warm basement floors then
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some sort of electric heating is going to be the thing and you will definitely
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need insulation for that. So that's where I recommend this. Now just to finish up
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you know, this is kind of a typical scene of a basement being finished. You've got
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to have something against the concrete. In most cases that's the subfloor panels
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I was talking about. If you want heat then you might want to go with some sort
11:37
of special foam product but bottom line is that concretes got to be covered in
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some way before that finished flooring goes down
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