"Luxury" vinyl plank on concrete basement floor (subfloor, ceramic, installing)
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Anyone have any experience installing vinyl plank on a basement concrete floor? Moisture isn't an issue.
Seems like you need to have a near perfect surface to make this stuff work. This basement has slabs that slope up to expansion joints, creating a slight hump at the joints. There is no reasonable way to get rib of that feature since that would involve grouting the entire basement to flatness which would be far more expensive than the plank itself.
The question becomes - how will the vinyl planks behave if it is installed over this "hump"? Any experience with this?
Alternative is carpet. Maybe ceramic tile in some areas.
Just stick with carpet. Or the carpet/tile as you suggested.
Grinding and/or self-leveling concrete can add substantially to the bottom line- and there’s still no guarantee that imperfections will show-thru (telegraph) the vinyl plank.
While the surface I wanted to cover with "floating" vinyl plank flooring wasn't concrete, there were a couple of minor threshold joins and unevenly set nails. Eventually they did telegraph through the vinyl. The vinyl installation instructions warned about irregularities, and they were right. The vinyl flexed (you could hear the adhesive "sticking" and "unsticking" itself over and over when walked across) and little peaks appeared over the nail heads. The walking surface of the vinyl didn't actually crack while I lived there but it wouldn't surprise me if it does eventually.
Last edited by Parnassia; 07-10-2023 at 04:35 PM..
Don't rule out sheet vinyl! There's lots of good quality floors out there, and sheet vinyl will be the most forgiving if you choose a pattern that will tend to make the unevenness less obvious.
Good quality sheet vinyl is a bit rubbery leading to a more comfortable surface over concrete. We have it in our rental and it feels nice underfoot.
While the surface I wanted to cover with "floating" vinyl plank flooring wasn't concrete, there were a couple of minor threshold joins and unevenly set nails. Eventually they did telegraph through the vinyl. The vinyl installation instructions warned about irregularities, and they were right. The vinyl flexed (you could hear the adhesive "sticking" and "unsticking" itself over and over when walked across) and little peaks appeared over the nail heads. The walking surface of the vinyl didn't actually crack while I lived there but it wouldn't surprise me if it does eventually.
I agree. I wanted to install LVP in my upstairs MBR just for ease of cleaning, but as soon as the installer looked at the existing floor he nixed the idea. The room had been enlarged from the original attic (bumped out) and there was a slight hump all the way across the floor. He said the planks would not lay flat and would eventually come apart or break. I had to recarpet the area, although I used a much better and brighter carpet. i just don't allow the cats to go up there at all. (Actually, I don't go up there much either, lol. I hate carpet.)
Parents had their home remodeled back in the 90's. It was a cinderblock summer cottage with concrete floors that, over the years, had been expanded and winterized. They had the contracter remove a cinderblock wall so that the kitchen could be expanded into a newer addition to the house. The base of the former wall left a hump in the concrete floor, which was then covered in a felt indoor/outdoor carpeting. Even though the carpeting was cheap, it completely concealed the hump.
Decades later, my sisters convinced my father to let them remove the rotting kitchen carpet and install "luxury" vinyl plank flooring. Now there's a highly visible speed bump in the middle of the room.
As others have mentioned, you could get a price to “flash patch” the humps in the concrete to tolerances within the standards for VP flooring.
You could compare that price to a commercial grade carpet tile which works well on concrete slabs and do not need to be adhered to the slab.
Could you grind down the irregularities? Otherwise I would also consider a sub floor.
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