The basement being an underground room, you will continually be plagued by problems like dampness and musty smell, unless and until you plan some special types of floors or go for special treatments for the floors.
Basement flooring systems must improve looks of the basement, but more importantly, they should be able to curb humidity, otherwise the basement will become a den of the microbes instead of becoming your favorite haunt.
Carpeting, a favorite (and conventional) flooring option, will be a wrong choice for basements.
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The bright and colorful looks of carpets do perk up the room but then the humidity-factor makes the carpets breeding grounds for bacteria and germs. This renders the place unfit for habitation. If you still insist on carpets, you may go for area rugs, which are easier to clean (on a regular basis).
Tiles, whether ceramic, marble or slate, make good floors for your basements. The huge medley of colors and designs that ceramic tiles present, allow you to set up a beautiful nest in the underground room. Speaking of marble, slate, or any other natural flooring material, they have their own grandeur and if you use them in your basement, they will lend their own beauty to it. The only problem with tiles (both natural and man-made stuff) is that it makes the floor a bit too cold but you can tackle this chillness simply by placing area rugs here and there.
Remember, you will have to prevent concrete fractures / cracks from affecting the tiling under any circumstance. A crack-isolation membrane will be a good preventive measure.
Hardwood floors have always been irresistible, whether you are thinking of above-the-ground floors or below-the-ground floors. These days, of course, engineered hardwoods are used in basements. Engineered hardwood flooring being made of three to five layers of different hardwoods (laminated under high heat and pressure), you hardly face problems like contraction and expansion or even warping. Side by side allaying all your moisture-related fears, hardwood floors promise you good looks as a bonus.
There are two different ways you can install hardwood floors in basements – the first is the glue-down flooring system and the second free floating flooring system. You can adopt any of these basement-flooring systems and get on with your basement completion project on your own.
Laminates, however, have been voted the best basement flooring systems to-date. Laminate flooring materials have a moisture resistant backing, which stops the water from traveling up. The resin-based aluminum oxide or melamine top-surface of laminates give basement floors attractive look, at the same time preventing surface stains and scratches from showing up. The same can be said of Vinyl flooring materials.
All this is fine. Nevertheless, a strong sub-floor is a prerequisite to combat the dampness and stuffy smell in basements. A well-set polyethylene plastic covered sub-floor will prevent the moisture from rising up, negating every possibility of sogginess showing up or producing any foul smell in the basement. It also effectively reduces sound. Therefore, no matter which of the basement flooring systems you go for, a good sub-floor will create a perfectly cozy atmosphere in basements, forming the base for high-performance, resilient flooring.
by Manuel Kupka
