BILLS BASEMENT BLOG - Basement floor replacement
Often the question comes up "how do I know when I should stop chasing problems and just replace my basement floor?". Well, that's a good question.
MOST floors that we replace are pretty obvious they need to be replaced. In fact most of them should have been replaced 75 years ago. Many have tons of cracks through them, and I'm not talking about a few cracks here and there (that's normal). I'm talkin about so many cracks in already too thin concrete that you can actually see the individual pieces move as you walk across the floor. I am not being sarcastic here, I've been in basements like this. I've seen floors that are literaly crumbling. Don't bother with that broom, it'll just loosen more of the floor. People who live in older houses know what I'm talking about here.
Basements with these types of problems can be fixed and made to be usable parts of your home. They can be finished just like the upstairs and can literaly double your usable living space giving you twice the space for the money. But, an important thing to remember when beginning your basement project is that at the end of the day a basement is a hole in the ground and needs to be treated as such. Don't expect that if you finish your basement, and don't take precautions to prevent that hole from filling with water at some point, that you won't be unfinishing it. All your hard work is sitting on the basement floor, why risk it. Even if your floor is "ify", why take the chance that all that time and money will be waisted. Deal with the floor issues before you get the kids toys and the entertainment system moved down there only to have it flood during a heavy rain.
Repalcing a basement floor can seem like an enormous job to most folks, but it's actually less intrusive then you might think. Sure, everything has to come out of the basement to get that floor out (some might even see this as a great time to throw out all those years of clutter). And there will be some noise for a little while during the removal process. But when all is said and done the new floor will be much more solid, and in most cases much flater than the 100 year old pile of gravel that used to be there. Also make sure a good quality waterproofing system, with a quality sump pump, is installed before the new floor goes down. And, of couse, the new floor needs to be laid on a nice thick vapor barrior to prvent moisture from coming up through those cracks that WILL eventually appear.
Deal with these floor issues BEFORE finishing your basement and you won't have to deal with them later. But if your basement floor is literally falling apart and you are planning to finish your basement, rest assured, you WILL be dealing with it.