Do you dream of your home having a room that is lavishly decorated with richly painted walls and freshly polished and shined hardwood floors to entertain your guests in or simply spoil yourself in? I think if you’re a homeowner that’s definitely a desirable room to have in any house. But what if you want that room to be in your unused basement? Here’s one time when you might want to really think about all those basement flooring ideas before you jump in headlong into a remodeling project in your basement that includes hardwood floors.

Just think about your basement for a bit. They are prone to all kinds of problems and one of the biggest killers of an expensive basement remodel is flooding. This can be from a huge rainfall where the drainage around the home didn’t do it’s job properly and ended up flooding your basement. Or, a more likely scenario would probably be surrounding the sump pump where it inadvertently quit working and resulted in flooding your entire basement while you were away at work. Occasionally, you might even get a little water seeping in after it rains through your basement walls and ends up ruining a section of the wall and flooring. What if you actually have a bathroom in your basement and you run in, use the facility, and then jet out the back to get to where you were going only to come home later and see that there was an issue in the last facility use and know it’s backed up all over the basement? For most though, the biggest problem  with their concrete basement floor is that it just gets damp from time to time whether it’s from seepage or just plain humidity and condensation.

Basement floors are just like any other floor in the house except for one simple thing, unlike a regular concrete floor home, these floors are typically built much lower into the ground sub-grade rather than on grade. The problem is that once you get sub-level, the ground gets quite cooler, just dig a little 1 or 2 inch hole into the ground and put your finger in it, I bet it’s cooler than you’d think. Now imagine going 8 to 10 feet down and pouring concrete for a basement. When that warm are from the inside hits those cold concrete walls and floors, it can’t help but to produce condensation. It’s a simple fact of having a basement and one that you have to deal with.  Add to that that concrete is more like a sponge at times due to it’s porosity, with all the run-off and water pressure that can build up along the outside it has no other place to go but to seep through those cold concrete slabs right onto the basement floor. If you have an unfinished basement, check it out for yourself as this can be especially evident if you’ve got cracks and after times of heavy rain.

So what does all this mean. Simple. Don’t use flooring that’s susceptible to water damage in the basement. Using appropriate flooring and preparation methods will in the long-run save you from a whole lot of heartache and trouble. If you do end up using something that’s susceptible to water damage, know the consequences and at least formulate a plan of protection surrounding it and some good basement waterproofing methods. Just remember that you could end up paying the price in not only the financial loss off the floor but the time and labor it took you to put it all in. Here’s some other great things for you to take note of if you are looking at basement flooring ideas:

1. If you’ve got a leaky basement, take the appropriate waterproofing measures and get it fixed before you start.
2. Tile can do very well in a basement. You can install it directly (if it’s clean and flat) to the concrete slab.
3. Sometimes simple is better. What about a good floor epoxy base with a neat sponged or striped coordinating color effect on top? There’s a ton of things you can do with this.

Carpet is alright with a basement as long as you take the appropriate precautions. I’d definitely never advise laying carpet directly on the basement floor without some kind of waterproof underlayment or subfloor. If you do, you stand the chance of getting that great musty basement smell that everyone loves and because it’s likely to capture a lot of that condensation, you’ll provide a haven for natural mold growth. Even still, you might find yourself replacing it every once in a while. A better solution if you’re thinking about carpet is to use carpet tiles instead. These rubber-backed beauties are great. You can mix and match and create any kind of patterns you’d like. Plus, if one gets a little worn or damaged, you just replace that single tile instead of a whole floor.

There are some classes of flooring that will need a little bit something more underneath them than that cold, hard floor. Something in the neighborhood of a subfloor. Don’t worry, this is nothng more than a floor that’s built on top of the concrete that’s raised just a little of the concrete itself. This will let all that nasty water dry out naturally or have sufficient room to drain down to a sump pump to be removed. Not only is this good for the drainage, but it’s good for the flooring material as well as it gives you the maximum life cycle opportunities the floor was intended for.

If you go the subfloor route, you have a wide variety of flooring that can be used in the basement. You could start looking into laminates. There are some simply beautiful laminate flooring that can be had fairly cheap. You could go green and use cork. You could even use vinyl or linoleum. On top of a subfloor their great, straight to the concrete not so good, the glue deteriorates and you’ll have tiles popping up and vinyl pulling off all over the place. As I said a little earlier, carpet is good, it’s even better on top of a subfloor.

If you’re dead set on a wood floor, here’s the last alternative for you that’s about as close as you should probably get in a basement. I’d still use a subfloor, but you could do engineered wood flooring for the basement. You still get the look of real wood as unlike laminates that basically use pictures, engineered flooring uses actual wood layers. Those layers are compressed together for the most part and then coated with resin.

There you have it. There’s tons of basement flooring ideas you could go with you just need to prepare and be ready for when disaster strikes. Think about how much it will affect you and how much you are willing to put into it and in the end, you’ll have a basement floor that you’ll love and will work for your situation.

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Large basement concrete slabs naturally expand and contract. This type of movement will inevitably cause cracked basement floors. If it was built and poured properly, the builder should have used control joints within the slab to help actively determine where and which way these cracks are going to occur. If it wasn’t, then there’s no telling where or even how they may spread.

Actively planning for cracks on a basement floor requires the use of control joints. Unfortunately if your slab is already poured and hard this is going to be pretty difficult to do if not impossible. But if it’s part of a new construction, having control joints in your basement slab will allow for cracks to form uniformly and expectedly due to movements caused in the drying and shrinking process as well as for contraction and expansion over time and temperature changes. These control joints are hidden and have to be made before the concrete cures. What happens is that the crew finishing your slab will actually slice through the entire thickness of the slab in a grid-like fashion. After it’s all sliced, they’ll re-trowel it to make it all smooth again giving the appearance of a completely solid piece. When it all cures and the slab eventually moves it will crack along those grid lines. In other words, when the concrete does crack as we all know it eventually will, you’ll know where it will crack and that it will also crack in a straight line instead of randomly all over the slab.

How big does the crack have to be to worry about?
Again, there’s some general guidelines amongst basement contractors that they tend to follow. If you have a crack on your basement floor that either separates or gives a vertical displacement of more than 3/16ths of an inch, then you’re likely to have a problem that needs some attention. You better look at correcting this situation before you start looking at any basement flooring ideas.

What do you do about cracked basement floors?
There are literally a number of things that you can do to remedy the cracks in concrete floors, but they are really dependent on what type of crack and what kind of flooring application you plan on installing over it. In all actuality though, probably the most prolific one is to do nothing at all. Take for example that you are just going to be laying a simple pad and carpet over the floor. The separations will be completely unnoticed and the differences will simply just disappear. But if you are going to install a much thinner type floor covering, something like vinyl tiles or linoleum, those same cracks and lifts in the floor could could cause some unwanted dips and spikes in the flooring itself. If you want to fix it you’re going to need to go rent a grinder from a local tool depot, as I’m sure you probably don’t just have one laying around and besides, it’s not like you need to buy one as you’re not going to need it again after this job, and just grind down all those irregularities that are shooting out of your concrete slab. You can then take a floor leveling compound and work the floor back into a level state of being.

Now if your cracks are a bit more serious or you’ve got a fairly large spot that sticks out quite a bit higher than the rest of the floor, these will entail quite a bit more work and it’s often quite hard to pinpoint it down to a certain cause. The good thing about this is, you’re not likely to have this type of situation as they are not that common. If you do happen to live in an area that has a fairly large substrate of clay underneath, like the Midwest, you may be a little more proned to some problems with your floor. The clay alone can play a major role in breaking up a concrete floor quite easily as it sucks up all that moisture and expands. To fix something like this can be difficult. There’s really only one or two things you can do. Get rid of the clay, or, you need to find a way to divert that water so it doesn’t get sucked up through the clay around your home. Either one can be a very painstaking task and you’d want to make sure that that is what’s causing the problem so I’d recommend checking with a professional not only to see that this is the cause, but what it would cost to get it corrected. Might turn out to be the best money you’d ever spent on your basement before you ever did anything in your basement.

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