4 Disadvantages of Carpet in Your Finished Basement

Carpet is soft and helps absorb sounds, but while it may look great, carpet has many disadvantages – especially when placed in your finished basement. Carpet isn’t as easy to maintain as other flooring options, such as concrete. If you would like to learn more, check out these four disadvantages of carpet in your finished basement.

1. Carpet Gets Dirty Fast

Carpet has many advantages because of the absorbent material used. However, this same feature that makes your floor soft and comfy allows it to get dirty fast. In fact, according to estimates, carpets may be up to 4,000 times dirtier than toilet bowls. Plus, your carpet can have one pound of dirt for each square yard and still look clean.

Carpets get dirty for many reasons, such as wearing your shoes on the carpet, especially shoes you wear outside. However, even if you don’t allow shoes on the carpet, germs like MERSA and norovirus may be hiding in the carpet. Carpets can get so dirty, that the United Sates National Institute of Health advises against them, especially in high traffic areas like schools and offices.

2. Carpet Worsens Allergies

If you or someone in the house suffers from allergies, carpet can worsen the symptoms. Besides holding onto dirt and germs, the carpet becomes a perfect filter to trap allergens like pet dander, pollen, dust, dust mites, and microscopic insect parts. Each time you walk on the carpet or even vacuum the carpet, you disrupt the allergens, knocking them into the breathing air.

Typically, the taller and thicker the carpet, the better it stores allergens, but any type of carpet attracts, captures, and holds dirt and other allergens. If your home is clean, but you’re still experience allergies, it may the carpet. Symptoms include sneezing, itchy eyes, runny nose, irritated throat, hives, wheezing, coughing, and shortness of breath.

3. Carpet Is Difficult to Clean

Cleaning your carpet can help remove some of the dirt, germs, and allergens, but cleaning carpets well is more complicated. And if you knock allergens into the air, they can get inside your lungs, get inside the HVAC system, or settle back onto carpet to restart the process.

Newer vacuums with HEPA filters will do a better job of trapping allergens, so they don’t get back into the air. Besides vacuuming, however, carpets may need to be shampooed. If you use too much soap or not enough water, however, you can actually make the whole situation worse. While the carpet may look great for a while, the residue of soap attracts more dirt, causing your carpet to get dirtier faster.

4. Carpet Absorbs and Holds Water

Another problem with shampooing your carpet is that it holds water well for long periods of time. Therefore, if you use too much water, the carpet stays wet longer, increasing the risk of mold or mildew growth. Mold can irritate people with mold allergies, but even if you don’t have allergies, your carpet may smell musty.

Even if you never shampoo your carpet, water is a real threat in the basement. Basements are usually subgrade, which means they are fully or partially underground. Any room that is partially underground has a risk of flooding. Since these flood waters often come from outside, you don’t know what contaminates or hazardous chemicals and toxins reside in the water. For this reason, a flood may require total removal of the carpet.

Carpet requires a lot of maintenance to keep it looking good and clean, making it a poor choice for subgrade rooms like the basement. Instead, hard floorings like concrete are a less stressful option because it’s easy to clean them and remove any moisture. If you would like to learn more about why you should swap out your carpet for concrete flooring, contact us at Deluxe Concrete today.