Its Freezing Outside... so its a Basement Project Day.

A month or so ago I lifted up the edge of the vinyl flooring I put down in the back room of the basement where we put the dogs when we have to be gone for a while.  It wasn't pretty...  Rest of the flooring I put in down there were the snap together plastic tiles that are marketed for garages.  They work great in that they sit up off the floor so there is air circulation under them, and some of them are actually vented - in areas where I have water supply in case of spillage.  But I didn't want to use those back there for the dogs cause there are cracks... so if by chance they had an accident and didn't do it on the potty pads we put down for them...  pee seeps into the cement and dries up - nasty!  So my thought was a solid piece of vinyl - worked great, except didnt think about the floor being damp in the humid months under there... so guess what I found when I lifted it up last month.....mold.   Yet another new project was added on my list!  So I hit the drawing board (aka Google) to find solutions to my problem.  Still needed to use the vinyl - but I needed it to breath under the flooring.

Half of the floor flipped back and cleaned off.

First thing was I had to remove everything from the one side of the room to start.  I pulled back and flipped it over the other half of the room.  With my spray bottle of bleach water and roll of paper towels I was ready for combat!  I sprayed everything down good - let it stand for 10mins and wiped all the nastiness off.  Now some of it wasn't mold but effervescence as I did seal it with a Radon sealer before I did the flooring so the sealant pushes up lime and stuff as it reacts in the cement.  I repeated this 3 times waiting each time after spraying to let the bleach react and kill any mold spores.

What the part I haven't got to looks like...  blah!  The white is just mineral deposits tho - nothing bad,
but the darker stuff is mold. 

I also sprayed down the cement good with bleach as well, I'm letting that just soak in, once I have the flooring all cleaned and dried I will roll it up then move it out of there.  Once that is done I can rinse the floor with clean water (luckily there is a floor drain in the room) and will repeat with more bleach water and scrub it and rinse and let dry for a few days with fans blowing over it.  I used a tidy-cat bucket to throw away the dirty wet paper towels since it has a snappy lid to keep it sealed. 

My Supplies - this is that other flooring used in the other part of the basement.

 I found a company in Canada called SuperSeal who make a whole bunch of dimpled materials - some that you may have seen on TV if you are like me and watch HGTV/DIY channels - larger version of this is used on the outside of basement walls to waterproof and create channels for the water to run down thru.   They sent me samples and when I was ready to buy I went back on their website (www.superseal.ca) and they advertised that they now sell some of their products at Menards - PERFECT!  So I went and purchased a roll couple weeks ago and today just seemed like a great day to start on the project.

Tried to get photo so be able to see the dimples on both
sides of it allowing the cement and the vinyl floor to breath.

Once I get the floor all dried out I will lay out this subflooring down and then put the vinyl flooring back on top of it.  I'll keep an eye on it but I think this should allow enough ventilation of the cement to keep this from happening again.  This product will also probably make the floor a little softer to walk on as well and maybe keep the floor warmer for the dogs since it has the air space as insulation from the cold cement floor.  

I couldn't end this post without a gardening update....  Many of my peppers are getting their 1st set of real leaves.  Peppers do grow slowly so happy they get an early start in the basement.  Have a few varieties tho that have yet to germinate - one being the new variety I was most excited to try - not sure what the dealio is - will have to try to start some more and see if I have better luck this time.