From Basement to Beautiful - Steps to Waterproofing and Finishing your Basement
A wet basement kills over a floor of usable space in the house. Increase your living space and quality of life by waterproofing and finishing the space.
The Monster in the Basement
Picture this: Your upstairs floor leaks whenever it rains. Water is
dripping in and pooling on the floor. Even when it’s not raining, it
always seems to be damp, humid, and musty up there. Everything you
store there grows mold, and if you’ve laid wood floor and carpet, it’s
growing moldy, rotting, and the wood is buckling. The windows are
rusting and jammed, with spider webs growing in them, and the floor is
cold and clammy underfoot. The ceiling is sagging and moldy. Simply
put: your upstairs is ugly, uncomfortable and unhealthy. You avoid it
whenever you can. Under any circumstances, is this acceptable? Of
course not!
Then why would you let these conditions develop DOWNstairs?
You shouldn’t. It’s unacceptable. A basement represents an entire
floor’s worth of space- a gigantic percentage of the potential living
space in your home. To allow it to go unused is to deny the full
potential of your home. And given the current housing market, this is a
fantastic time to think about taking full advantage of every bit of
space available in your home.
Make the Most of What You’ve Got!
Finishing your basement runs at about 50% of the cost of adding a
new addition to your home. Remodeling Online reports that nationwide,
finishing a basement can increase the resale value of a home by about
61%-97% of the cost of the installation! If you’d like to see the full
report by Remodeling Online, stop by
http://costvalue.remodelingmagazine.com/index.html .
All numbers aside, if your basement is leaking, you have an
opportunity to take a problem in your home and change it into an asset.
Here are some disadvantages to a damp basement:
1. If you have cement or block basement walls or floors, water
collecting around your foundation in the looser backfilled earth is
seeping through your porous cement basement structure. Even if your
basement walls do not look damp, you can be sure that the moisture is
seeping through and being pulled up by the air, much like the dirt in a
potted plant does when the soil is wet but the surface is dry.
2. Humid basement air creates a reliable environment for mold
growth. If you allow that moisture to remain, there’s nothing stopping
mold from collecting on any and all organic surfaces in your basement,
including drywall, carpet, and hardwood floors.
3. If your basement has a musty smell, that would be from the
airborne fecal material from dust mites and mold spores in your
basement air. Because this air travels upwards in your house (like in a
chimney), these airborne materials will rise through your house and
enter your lungs when you breathe. This has been known to create and
intensify a variety of breathing related ailments.
4. A leaking basement is not a reliable storage space. Any valuables
you have there will be vulnerable to the flooding conditions.
A Beautiful Living Space
If you want to use your basement as a clean, dry area instead not
using it and keeping it as a moldy, wet and health-compromising space,
then you have no reason to invest in it. However, this is what your
basement could become:
- A beautiful family room with couches, game tables and a TV
- A naturally quiet and secluded-feeling home office
- A home theater with a flat screen mounted on a hardboard wall
- A personal gym with mats, weights and treadmills
- A safe, secluded play room for the children
- A beautiful and sophisticated wine cellar
To accomplish this, you’re going to want basement finishing and
remodeling products that can create a vapor barrier between your living
space and the cold, wet basement surfaces. On the walls, I’d recommend
a solid, free-standing cement board and hard foam insulation so you can
attach shelves, pictures, a plasma TV or anything else to their surface
without concern. Your windows should be double paned vinyl windows for
optimal insulation and soundproofing. On the ceiling, you’re going to
want a drop ceiling that will absorb noise from the basement and above
floors alike. The floors should be laid down in a way that blocks water
vapor from the basement floor and creates a thermal break on your
basement floors so they don’t feel as cold as the concrete below.
Finally, ALL surfaces installed in the basement will need to be
resilient to water damage.
Even if a basement is completely waterproofed and a vapor barrier is
placed on all surfaces, your basement is still susceptible to leaks
from water heaters, bursting pipes, overflowing sinks, bathtubs,
toilets, dishwashers, refrigerators, washing machines, and the
countless other things that hold water and can run downhill, creating a
flood in your basement.
The Best Basement Waterproofing Contractor and Basement Remodeling Experts for You
It’s important to find a basement remodeling contractor that is
still going to be in business if you need to service your installation
or have warranty work done. The small business administration reports
that 50% of contractors have their business fail within the first year
and over 96% within five years. It’s best to pick a company that you’re
confident will still be there when you need them.
, and we’d be happy to answer any questions you have!
About the author
Jacques Bouchard is a professional writer for
http://www.basementsystems.com . Our
company does basement waterproofing, crawl space encapsulation, sump pump
installation, dehumidification, and basement finishing. Our estimates, consultations, and 90-page
full cover books are free and no-obligation, and all our products come with a
great reputation and written warranty.
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Jacques Bouchard
Basement Systems
Total Basement
Finishing
60 Silvermine Road
Seymour, CT 06483
800-541-0487 x9335
Tags: basement walls, carpet, cement, circumstances, damp basement, finishing a basement, housing market, leaks, living space, mold, monster, new addition, quality of life, resale value, spider webs, upstairs, usable space, waterproofing, wet basement, wood floor
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