Flooring for Your Finished Basement

Out of all the surfaces in your basement, the floor is the one that is most vulnerable to water damages when your basement leaks.  The water will get onto and under the floor and sit there for a long time before it eventually dries out.  It will get absorbed into wood floors or carpets like a sponge and ruin them.  Laminate floors are simply particle board with a thin plastic finish laminated to the top surface, so when they get wet, they swell at the edges between the boards and don’t regain their shape when they dry.  Just one plumbing leak could completely ruin your floor if you aren’t careful.

It doesn’t take a huge leak to ruin these types of floors.  Water vapor slowly passing through your porous concrete floor from the damp earth below is enough to cause buckling, and it will cause moisture to get trapped underneath the floor, resulting in a moldy smell.  However, Total Basement Finishing by Woods Basement Systems does have a solution for this problem.

ThermalDry Basement Floor Matting is the best solution for your finished basement space.  It is available in several different colors in a carpeted or tiled finish, giving you the option to pick which look you want for your basement.  ThermalDry consists of modular floor tiles that snap together.  Each tile has raised pegs on the bottom that create an air space under the floor, which prevents water from condensing under the floor.  It also creates a thermal break by having a space between your feet and the cold, hard, concrete floor.

Both the carpet and tiled finish of ThermalDry are water resistant.  When you have a basement leak or flood, just dry the place out, which is much easier with the air space under the floor, and the carpet or tile is not ruined.  Because ThermalDry is designed with modular floor tiles, a few tiles can easily be popped up to blow air under the floor with a fan when needed for drying up after a leak.

Another advantage of the modular design is if you ever have a stain or damage to one spot in the floor, you can simply replace that one tile (or switch it for one from a closet or under furniture), and your flooring is back to looking great.  This is much easier than it would be with wall-to-wall carpeting.  Also, you can easily mix and match the pattern of your basement flooring with tiled and carpeted areas.  You can tile high-traffic areas and carpet the rest.  It allows you to give your basement a custom look, and it’s easy.