Basement Flooring in El Paso TX - a floor laid over a slab we've tested

Most people call us about one of two basements. Either it's bare concrete they finally want to use, or it's a floor that's already lifting, smelling musty or showing a stain that keeps coming back. The price turns on the size of the room, the floor you pick and what the slab needs before it's ready, like old coating or glue to take off or dampness to fix. The schedule turns mostly on whether the slab passes its moisture test or needs work first. I'll give you your own number once I've seen the slab.

In a basement the floor is the easy part and the water is the hard part, so that's where we start. We look for the signs, like a white crust on the concrete, dark edges along the walls or a musty smell. Then we test the slab in the spots where the new floor will actually go, not just one handy corner. If it's damp, we work out where the water is coming from before we talk about flooring, because covering a moisture problem usually makes the air worse and can do real damage, and stopping or controlling the source is almost always the fix that works. Once the slab is ready, our crew preps the surface and lays the floor.

A lot of basement slabs carry old paint, sealer or carpet glue that has to come off first, and that's what concrete grinding and surface preparation is for, since a new floor only holds as well as the surface under it. If you'd rather keep the basement as plain concrete, concrete sealing is the lighter option, and we'll tell you at the estimate whether your slab is a good fit for it.

The City of El Paso requires a building permit to build, enlarge, alter, repair, move or tear down a building or structure, and El Paso's One Stop Shop is where those permits are taken. Laying a basement floor isn't named on its own in that list, so whether your job needs a permit is the city's call, and we check with the office that covers your address before we start. If it does need one, we handle the paperwork, or we walk you through it if you're filing as the owner. While you're on the city's site, search its flood zone maps, including the preliminary ones, because it's a quick way to see whether your address sits in a flood zone before you put money into a floor below ground.

Most basements we're called to here have been bare for years or were finished once and let go, and the cause is usually water from a storm, a plumbing leak or plain dampness coming through the concrete. We test and fix things the same way on jobs in Socorro and across the state line in Sunland Park.