Renovating Basement Floors

Tired of looking at that concrete floor or that old flooring in your basement?  Want to cover the concrete or replace that old floor?

 If you said yes to these questions you should ask yourself some more questions.  Does the concrete floor get wet during the year?  Is the concrete floor painted?  Would you like the floor to be warmer?  does anyone in your house have allergies?  Do you have children that play in the basement?  These questions and other should be asked before choosing a floor.

Many products exist on the maorket that can solve a number of issues that you may have in your basement.  If your basement floor gets wet during the year, you may want to think about raising the floor a little and get it off the concrete.  Products like Tyroc, Dri-core and Ovrx can do this for you and allow water to pass under the finshed floor.  The added bonus of Tyroc and Dri-core are that they allow air and water movement, effectively stopping the growth of mould.  Each builds up the floor to keep it away from the cold concrete floor making the finished floor warmer.  If you are planning on using one of these products make sure that you will have enough headroom.

 Say you are lucky and have had no moisture in your basement, but you want the floor to be warmer.  Ovrx would be th solution to this situation, Ovrx is an underlayment system that uses OSB panel on the top like Dri-core, but has closed cell foram insulation on the bottom.  The panels are tongue and groove, 2'x2' in size, making for strong, stable and warm subfloor.  You can put almost any type of flooring overtop of Tyroc, Dri-core or Ovrx, some types like carpet ory vinyl have to have a wooden underlayment installed over before the flooring.

 You would like to install laminate flooring in your basement, but you also have someone with allergies in the house.  Delta floor is an underlayment product that looks like foundation membrane; it has cups on the bottom, which elevates it off the floor.   The advantage that Delta Floor has in this case is that you can put the laminate underlay and floor ing directly over top, on extra plywood or other subfloor needed.  The other advantage that Delta Floor has in this case is that it allows airflow under the finished floor minimizing or eliminating any dampness that may occur.

Before we had these fancy subfloor panels available, people used to lay plastic down on the concrete floor to block moisture, then tapcon screwed down PT 2x4's every 24" on centre.  Celfort (rigid foam insulation) in between and then lay down 3/4" thick plywood and screwed to the 2x4's.  This method leaves no room for air circulation or possible water movement like their modern counterparts.  So which would you rather use?