How might one go about laying tile on a cement basement floor?

The main issue to be concerned with is will the basement stay dry. If it floods, or if water leeches up through the floor, you may be able to cure the water problem. But if you cannot, then any floor covering down there may be a bad idea.

If it stays dry, you can install tile easily on concrete. After buying our last house, we tore out some really seedy carpeting and laid ceramic tile on 1500 sq. ft. of slab floor. All that was needed was to get the concrete clean and dry before putting down the tile cement. You can get similar results with other styles of tile.

Here’s a link to info on using ceramic tile in a basement.

@ETpro: I know the room next to it has carpeting that gets wet, but they’re not sure where the water is coming from yet. The floor we want to tile, though, which is right next to that room, doesn’t get wet. I don’t think.

What I’m mainly worried about is whether or not we need to do any sort of leveling or anything… it’s not smooth… but not knowing anything about this stuff, I would assume the adhesive/grout/whatever would fix that?

Edit: nevermind about the leveling, I read the link hehe

if there are any cracks in the concrete floor, even small ones, odds are the finished tile job will eventually crack right along the same crack line. I have had to replace dozens of tiles in several homes because of that. If the slab floor has an active fault, it’s going to be tough to keep tile intact. Wood flooring whether glue down or floating would be a doable solution in that case.

@poofandmook What kind of tile do you have in mind? And good luck getting the wetness in the carpoeted area under control. Otherwise, mildew will ned up making the place smeall terrible.

we’re trying to see if it’s a gutter or an easy fix… it seems to be in one place. Next spring we plan on digging around the house and sealing the foundation.

@poofandmook I’d rule out water leakage before proceeding.