Raised Basement Floor
I want to raise part of the floor in the main area of my finished basement. I own a small brownstone in Carroll Gardens. The basement was finished before I bought the house this past spring. The floors were left concrete. With all of these freak rain/hail storms, I’ve had flooding. I’ve made changes to…
I want to raise part of the floor in the main area of my finished basement. I own a small brownstone in Carroll Gardens. The basement was finished before I bought the house this past spring. The floors were left concrete.
With all of these freak rain/hail storms, I’ve had flooding. I’ve made changes to drains and put in a new sewer line so hopefully it won’t flood again; but in the event it does, I want to raise part of the floor since this is used as my office/studio.
I only have about 2″ max in height for the raised floor. Essentially, I’m describing a platform.
I’ve looked into composite decking and found one that looks good but would need to find some metal sleepers instead of composite decking sleepers as I want whatever touches the concrete floor to be non-absorbant.
Any suggestions and also, does anyone know of someone who might be able to build this for me? The area is approx 14′ square.
There are some galvanized pedestal raised flooring systems in low finished floor heights of 2 1/2″-5″ which come in woodcore or concrete panel options. They’re mostly used in clean/computer room situations, but really they can be used almost anywhere. They allow for good air circulation and the pedestal bases can be adjusted up or down accordingly.
http://www.accessfloorsystems.com/skin/frontend/blank/default/images/other_images/sdaslff.gif
A floating floor would be fine, although I think it would be a little tougher to install plywood on sleepers if the sleepers weren’t attached. If the floor isn’t perfectly flat and level you’re going to have to shim the sleepers(unless you don’t really care that much about the floor being level with no dips or high spots, which given it’s intended use, may be the case). It would be tough installing the plywood without knocking the shims out of whack. While there would be ways around that, it seems like it would be just as easy to fasten the sleepers down. While composite decking does expand and contract I think it wouldn’t be an issue for sleepers, and the little expansion/contraction that you would have would be much less than normal for an inside installation, you don’t have the temperature extremes.
Thx. I looked into the Home Depot panels and all I could see were the Dricore panels and I wasn’t impressed with them … looked less than 1″ and very coarse pressed board on top.
I saw some really cool, plastic, snap-together subfloor panels on bobvilla.com. Just have to find out where they can be purchased from.
I originally thought of composite decking for the raised platform; but there are issues with using the decking as the floor … the sleepers would work, but I would have to put down plywood or some other flat surface on them. Composite decking needs to contract and expand so the boards need to be placed with some space between them and that causes issues with furniture and equipment.
Since the area I plan on raising it bordered by 4 walls, why would I need to fasten it to the floor? Wouldn’t the walls hold it in place?
Stay away from the panels at Home Depot. They are OSB-based and will rot. Very bad idea.
The panels that Bobjohn describes are not waterproof, and only about 3/4’s of an inch deep, so that wouldn’t really give you much room for flooding(at least the ones that I’m familiar with, maybe there are some out there that I don’t know about). I’m thinking why not use Trex, or a similar plasticized wood for sleepers. I’m assuming that it would be cheaper than aluminum, easier to fasten, both to the existing floor, and the flooring on top, and you wouldn’t need to put any shock absorbing material in place as they are a little giving to begin with. I agree with Hooky though, sounds like a good DIY project to me.
Thanks for the suggestions. I will look into both ideas.
Home Depot sells basement floor panels. They have plastic grid on the bottom and wooden top. They are about 1 1/2 ” high and you can lock panels together.
I would think that you could easily use square aluminum tubing. Make sure you put the sleepers on rubber shimming intermittently for shock absorption. It sounds like you know what you’re doing, why not DIY?