I've got a very dry, clean, tidy, high-ceilinged basement in a 4-year old home, approx 25' X 45' in size. Unpainted concrete block walls. Poured concrete floor with some minute cracks. The ground outside goes about 3/4 of the way up. There is no evidence of leakage although there is a sump pump that I hear turn on briefly every couple of days.
I want to finish off the basement dividing it into 4 rooms: furnace room, family room, bedroom, bathroom.
Would the following be the best way to start:
1) seal and/or paint the inside block walls.
2) stud out with 2X4s positioned an additional 2" from the wall so that I could stuff 6" fiberglas insulation between the 16" on center studs.
Cover it all with plastic before screwing on 1/2" drywall
Is this arrangement inviting condensation? Should I maybe delete any seals and use a de-humidifier instead? Should the bottom 2X4 plate be pressure-treated? Do I even need insulation... wouldn't the dirt outside be insulation enough? Is step #1 even needed?
im not real happy with the plastic. Id prefer to manage the water from the outside rather than trapping it behind the plastic. i would investigate where that sump system is draining from. if its running that infrequently it does not look like you will have any serious problems if the piping is outside of the foundation .
Since I've been planning a similar project, I've been doing a lot of reading in the trade mags, etc., and here is what I think is the best approach.
Using foam adhesive, glue 2 inch thick foam board to the walls, completely covering them. Seal all seams with the tape made for the purpose.
Build your uninsulated stud wall in front of but not against the foam, leaving an inch or two for air to circulate.
Here are the advantages of doing it this way.
No chance for warm humid basement air to contact cold outside wall and condense, potentially causing mold problems. (There is almost no way to prevent this when using fiberglass...it's just too hard to get a perfect vapor barrier.)
Not having insulation in the wall assembly makes it easier to run wires and plumbing.
2 inches of foam has higher r value than 6 inches of fiberglass.
Bedrooms require a secondary means of egress, usually a sufficiently large window whose sill is at most 44" above the finish floor. So you'll probably need to install a window well for a bedroom in the basement.
2 inches of polyisocyanurate has approximately the same R-value as 3.5" of fiberglass. Most people would use the cheaper blue or pink foam board, which would require 4" of foam to equal the 6" of fiberglass.
R
Yes use cement block sealer, I used a powder I mixed with water and painted it on with a wall paper paste brush. Did two coats since after putting up walls hopefully will never see them again. I used PT lumber for bottom of frames and galvanized nails, my frames were nailed together then tipped up, be sure to leave enough clearance. I found predrilling holes in the PT lumber was a good idea since driving galvanized nails through wasn't easy, mainly because I wasn't hitting a real firm surface.
I used a drop ceiling but left several ducts uncovered, just painted them tan paint.
========================= My Local "Code" does require a second means of EGRESS from Bedrooms.. which like Wayne notes may require you to install a window and a window well outside... HOWEVER ...if you devide the basement up into Furnace room, family room,Sewing room, and bathroom no window would be required..
Mine home is like that...I just can not sell the house as a 5 bedroom home.. my wife loves to sew so we have 2 sewing rooms downstarirs none of which have a sewing machine...
You didn't say how much head room you have in the basement. If your basement doesn't have enough vertical space, you may not even want to be bothered with finishing it. After leveling the floor, adding a drop ceiling, you might find that the ceiling is kind of low. Please check the head room before proceeding with this project.
You may also need to decide if you have enough storage space after you have converted the basement from storage into living space. If you have already had enough living space, you may want to leave good enough alone.
You may want to level the floor before framing up the wall. If you find that one side of the room is higher than the other side after you have already framed the wall, you will have to level the floor, and the build up on the floor may be so high that the bottom plate of the wood frame may be below the floor level (after you have put on the flooring); then you will have to build up the bottom plate of the wood frame in order to have a nailing surface for the baseboard. Moreover, framing a wall on a level ground is easier than trying to frame on the group that is uneven. Having said that, I need to point out that you don't need to worry about this if the floor is rough but is basically level.
This is a good idea to paint the basement wall with thing like DryLock to seal the wall. Still, you should use plastic sheet to cover both sides of the wall frame that is covering the basement wall to avoid any possibility that miosture may get into the insulation (in case moisture gets through from the basement floor that is not sealed).
I curse the previous owners of my house that put up the 12X12 interlocking ceiling tiles stapled to furring strips. Impossible to take one down to run a cable line, phone wire, etc. If I were to redo it, I would just spray everything in the ceiling flat black. Looks great, no clearnace issues, and if you ever need to run something new it is open. Get a can of black spray paint and spray whatever new pipe, wire etc. so it blends in.
My understanding is that any room with a closet and a door that separates it from the rest of the house is considered a bedroom for egress requirements. Also, I believe that some jurisdictions require a secondary egress route from any finished basement, with or without bedrooms. That is, a basement with no bedrooms would require one secondary egress, located anywhere in the basement; a basement with bedrooms would require one secondary egress in each bedroom.
So to the OP, check with the local jurisdiction about egress requirements.
On 31 Jan 2006 09:23:49 -0800, snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com wrotF:
Floor to bottom of joist is 9'. How do I test whether the floor is perfectly level? There's a bilco door from the basement to the outside. I'll try to integrate that into the bedroom floor plan instead of putting in a larger window.
I dunno. The block is sealed. Then plastic? You've now locked in whatever moisture there is into the wall cavity. I'd probably seal the block and use rigid insulation. Then build the wall with a bit of space between it and the insulation for air movement. Cheers, cc
I also don't like the idea of using interlocking ceiling tiles. But a drop ceiling is a completely different animal. We can easily remove a ceiling tile from a drop ceiling because the ceiling tile is not stapled onto the grid. It is just resting on the grid by gravity. Actually, I have run network wiring through out my finished basement (that has a drop ceiling) _after_ I had the drop ceiling in place, and I didn't have any problem doing this. Obviously, I should have installed the wiring _before_ I put the drop ceiling in place. But that was before I got TiVo-like service (PVR) and high speed internet; therefore, I didn't feel the need to have networking in my house when I finished my basement.
I had thought of painting the basement ceiling in black. But other people told me that this would make the ceiling even more apparent to our eyes with all those pipes painted in black, and they recommended painting the ceiling in light color. I don't understand the logic. But when I sat in someone's basement (in a restaurant) that has its low ceiling painted white, I felt fine. When I saw a ceiling being painted black, it tended to be in a high ceiling with decorative banners that block the view of the ceiling. Therefore, this logic seems to be right. At that time, I didn't know whether I should paint it in black or in white, and I decided not to deal with this issue, and I simply install a drop ceiling. The drop ceiling turns out to be a better choice than painting the ceiling. The reason it is better is that when I run cable in the basement ceiling, I don't need to paint the cable; I simply mount the cable in the ceiling behind the drop ceiling.
9-ft should be enough. 8-ft for living space should be enough to meet the code (please check your local building code). Then you will have
1-ft left for the flooring and the drop ceiling. A drop ceiling with
2'x2' square grid should only need very little vertical space (something like 6" or less) for moving a ceiling tile in place. Then you will have as much as 6" for leveling the floor and for the flooring. 6" sounds a lot. But some methods of leveling the floor may require you to have a raised floor, and 6" may or may not be enough.
There are probably many ways to check the floor to see if it is level. The way that I suggest is to use a water-tube-level or a laser-level to draw a level line around your basement wall. And then transfer that level line down close to the floor level -- such as 1" above the floor. Now, you have a solid level line marked on the wall 1" above the floor. Then you need two persons to do the following: o Each holds one end of a string. o Move to a corner of the basement. o One person holds the string against one side of the wall right at the level line that you have drawn; another person holds the string against another side of the wall also at the level line. o One person moves the string along the level line. This causes the string to sweep across the floor. The other person observes the distance between the string and the floor. If the floor is truely level, the distance should remain the same (such as 1" in this example). If not, the other person should mark down the high spot on the floor. The purposes of this sweep are to find out if the floor is truely level, and to find the highest spot on the basement floor. o If the floor is not level, and you have found the highest spot of the floor, you need to re-draw the level line in a way that the new level is barely above the highest spot of the floor. The new level line may be above or below the existing level line; this is OK. o Sweep the floor one more time. This time you follow the newly re-drawn level line. You need to mark down not only the high spots, but also the low spots, and you need to measure how deep the low spots are from the level line. o Now, you have the numbers of all the low spots ready. Draw the layout of your basement on a piece of paper and put the numbers on it. o Examine the numbers to see how bad the situation is. If the floor is basically level with a small number of sunken areas, you may decide to level the floor yourself. If the floor is totally unlevel, you may decide to hire a pro to level the floor for you, or you may decide to drop this project all together. If the floor is tilting to one side significantly, you may need to hire a pro to see if the foundation of your house is in trouble or not.
I have no comment on how to integrate the basement exterior door with your floor plan. But if you decide to place the exterior door inside the bedroom, you may want to make sure that the interior door of the bedroom is large enough for you to move applicants from outdoor to the other area of the basement via the bedroom.
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