Cork flooring installation - the eco-friendly flooring choice, with "how to" video

The cheapest and more effective first step to solving your problem is without a doubt, a continuously operating dehumidifier in the basement. Select one that is sized to manage the amount of space you have, and try to keep it about 40% RH. If you don’t already have a heat recovery ventilation system, you may want to look into that as well.

A house that old probably has nothing to protect the foundation from moisture, so the source of the moisture is not something like a washing machine, it is the porous concrete floor and walls absorbing moisture, which then migrates inwards. Your basement is basically a damp box. Covering the floor (if it is currently bare concrete) will help somewhat.

One flooring option we really like, but that isn’t the cheapest unfortunately is marmoleum (see link below). We don’t often recommend vinyl as a building material, but given your limited budget and limited head room, we suspect you’re going to end up with something like that anyway so we would point you towards either Lowes or Home Depot since both those retailers have made a commitment to only stock vinyl flooring that contains no phthalates.

The brands to avoid are, unfortunately, those that show a ‘recycled content’ label, as they can contain post-consumer plastics from electronic equipment such as computers. Phthalates in vinyl flooring are toxic to both the planet and humans, particularly small humans that may crawl on the floor then stick their grimy little fingers in their adorable little mouths, or your mouth on occasion too J

With a bit of price shopping you should be able to find something in the $1.50 - $1.75 USD per square foot range in a click together style, there are also some that have an adhesive backing that will stick right to the floor. Below are some links to help choose products as well as how to finish your basement if you do decide to do some more work on it.

• Why are Basements Moldy? How to Fix & Prevent Mold in Homes

• Preventing mold when you insulate your basement

• Marmoleum : A healthy and non-toxic green flooring product

• The Difference Between an HRV and an ERV

Collecting solar heat from south facing windows is a great way to save money and energy on heating, and a concrete floor is one of the best surfaces to collect and store heat. But the energy gains are not nearly significant enough to be worth living on a floor that you just don’t like. You may have seen this already, but here is our page on passive heating –

Passive solar heating - how to warm your home with the sun

Even if you put a floor covering on a concrete slab floor, you will still get the temperature balancing effects of thermal mass as long as it is insulated below, and therefore kept inside your building envelope. Darker colors are ideal for absorbing heat, but within the confines of a home, the heat collection advantage of darker floors is not that pronounced. 

The reason is that once energy has entered your home (as in light through the window), it’s in. It will then either be absorbed by the floor, or reflected by the floor, in which case it will then hit another surface in your home and the heat will be partially absorbed there. Some light will be reflected towards and out the window again, but you are pretty much splitting hairs at that point.

All that is to say, don’t worry too much about the color of your floor, or by putting a floor covering over your slab that makes you more comfortable and happy.

Radiant heated floors perform best when there is nothing to slow the transfer of heat, like wood or cork flooring, but again, the effects aren’t so pronounced that you should fret about it. Best is to inform an HVAC designer ahead of time if you plan to add a floor covering so they can determine the R value and how it is affected, but at worst it will slow the delivery of heat slightly, but as long as you keep the house at a certain temperature you really wouldn’t notice much difference. Wood floors would also be more comfortable when the floor isn’t heated, due to the reduced conductivity of heat between your feet and the floor. 

Our latest demonstration house is a prefab kit house seated on a solar air heated floor with a polished concrete slab. High-performance prefab homes tend to be more affordable than site-built homes, and they are available in Ontario if you’re interested. you can see our Passive House and LEED ready prefab homes here, a few of which are oriented for passive solar heat gain, so maybe something there will meet your needs.  Here are a few more pages you may like while doing your research, hope that helps!

• Designing Homes for Human Comfort
• Passive solar Kenogami house - the most resilient house in North America
• How to choose the best windows for High Performance Homes