laminate floor in a basement ?
 

We have a finished room in our basement that had carpet in it. The subfloor is 2x4's laying flat on concrete with vapor barrier and 3/4 " tongue and groove aspen/flake board. We're thinking about going with a laminate floor, there shouldn't be any problems installing this right ? There is no moisture problems at all in the basement. The room has AC/heat ducting from the central AC/furnace. I just want to make sure before I spend the $$$ on the laminate.

There are methods that are acceptable. I'd float it instead of glue or staple down and probably install a dehumidifier.

Float it and glue the joints, and make sure you leave a good gap around the edges. From the few jobs that I've seen/done it seems to expand/contract a bit more in basement applications. I've seen one wavy floor where the gaps weren't big enough, fortunately fixed with a bit of trimming.

For the basement I used dricore subfloor, it has a tongue&groove design and raises the floor enough to never have any moisture issues.
For the laminate floor I used the resilient flooring from TrafficMaster (I bought everything in Home Depot).
The laminate floor has the tongue/groove design too and is pre-glued, installation of that thing is a joke, just score it across and cracks perfectly.

The whole basement took me about 40-50 hours and the laminate was like 4.
So laminate is fine, the one I chose was a bit more but I know I can replace "boards" anytime and have 25 yr. warranty.

If you put vapor barrier aren't you defeating the purpose of letting the concrete breath?


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Funny we just got a bunch of quotes on finishing our basement. I've done more of the framing and electrical, but the wife wants it done faster. Needless to say all quotes came in STUPID high, so we will do it all ourselves. Look at both Delta-FL and Drycore for underfloor products. Both work well to let the air under the floor and will support carpet, laminate, engineered floor and in some cases tile.

We're thinking engineered HW versus carpet or laminate.

As long as everything's level you should be good.

I did 700 sq feet of laminate over a delta fl vapor barrier/thermal break. Lot of work but it isn't really difficult if you take your time and think about it.
Laminate is pretty reasonably priced.