Static

Ralph,

Many flooring materials will develop a static charge under the right conditions. Carpet as well as vinyl flooring can be a problem. Even a wood floor with a good wax covering can be a source of static. When ever you handle electronic devices you should discharge your body. That said a DCC throttle should be isolated enough to allow handling with out too much concern. You may want to use care when connecting the throttle to the throttle bus, and not touch the bare connectors. In the electronics industry grounding plates/mats are provided to discharge any static on your body.

A wood, or ceramic floor may help. They make anti-static floor material and floor mats, but they are pretty pricey. I have operated a Digitrax layout with the glue down type floor in some areas and carpet in the others, without any apparent problems for years.

If you do use the vinyl self stick floor, Yon should clean and paint the floor to ensure a good grip for the glue. I put this stuff on a new plywood floor and it shifted around.

Regards, John ***********************************************************************************************************************

It takes a woman twenty years to make a man of her son, and another woman twenty minutes to make a fool of him. <> Helen Rowland

Ralph, I had static

One Way to Solve the Static Problem

Folks,

Don Ball has posted his solution to the static problem when he installed floor coverings that ease the pain on his feet and legs but induced the dreaded static problem.  Please go to his great blog site to learn his simple plan.  http://sandcrr.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2013-02-11T14:45:00-06:00&max-results=7 go down to the post for November 15 2012 on Static Problem solved.

Also you get an opportunity to see a really well executed 1895 layout set in the Great Valley of California.

Cork

Cork  tiles would be superb for this application. I have used them a few times (Although not for around a MRR layout) and just love them. They have a little cushion to them for both your feet and for Casey Jones' locomotive when it flys off of the layout. I don't recall ever getting a static shock from them, but as has been mentioned, static can build up on just about any flooring material. A lot depends on your footwear. If you wear plastic flip flops you could probably build up a static charge on just about any floor. The drawbacks are that cork tiles are not cheap (~$3.50-$4.00 s.f I think) and I do not recall seeing self adhesive cork tiles, although I have never searched for them. I do not recommend using self adhesive tiles anyway, so I don't regard that as much of a drawback.

Carpet tiles

  I have commercial type carpet tiles in my small train room and they seem to be working fine.They claim to be able to be pulled up if needed but I've never had any reason to try it. Don't recall how much they cost but it is a pretty small room so I wasn't too concerned about cost per square foot when I got them. Never noticed any static electricity issues with them but I tend to move pretty slow when I'm in there...........DaveBranum

Tile for the Basement Floor

Thanks for the response

Thanks for the response everyone. I have a humidifier, so I can control that. Anything that requires gluing is out for me. I will continue to investigate.

Exercise flooring

may be what you are looking for:

http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc1vZb97i/h_d2/Navigation?catalogId=10053&langId=-1&storeId=10051

Jose.

Exercise flooring is what I

What about Paint?

You might look here. This may be a cheap option.

http://www.all-spec.com/products/4700-SS1.html?gclid=CJb1ztCM8bcCFQyg4AodlWcApQ

Maybe ESD mats.

http://www.esdmat.com/ESD_Anti_Fatigue_Floor_Mats.php

Regards, John ********************************************************

Silence is better than unmeaning words. <> Pythagoras

Computers & Static

This is a bit off topic, but I also build computers, and the static issue always comes up. My 100% effective anti-static assembly protocol is to assemble with bare feet on a stone or concrete floor. I have been tinkering with electronics my whole life, and I have never a single time experienced static damage, even when not taking measures to deal with it (*knocks on wood*). My thought is that it would probably require a good arc-er that makes your finger ache to do any damage. A guy on a computer forum I frequent tried everything he could think of to try and static fry a CPU, including vigorously rubbing it on a cat and even wearing plastic shoes and rubbing his feet on carpeting and arcing directly through the CPU with a visible and quite painful arc . Was pretty comical, and in the end he was not able to damage the CPU.

Disclaimer: "I am not responsible for damaged electronic equipment if anybody disregards the dangers of static discharge"

James

"Exercise flooring" ?

  would set as bad tone for a train room. I wanna relax in there and not exert myself. Do they make nap flooring? Reminds me of my auto racing days, when I wanted to relax I'd go out to the shop and lay under the stock car with my feet showing and my wife would think I was working on it and leave me alone :> ) ..DaveBranum

Re: "Exercise flooring"

There are several kinds, one is rubber. And did you notice the beautiful oxymoron?.

would set as bad tone for a train room. I wanna relax in there and not exert myself. Do they make nap flooring?

Jose.

vinyl laminate flooring?

Ralph- I just did our kitchen with vinyl wood-look flooring from Lumber Liquidators.  It "clicks" together like "Pergo" stuff, but is plastic.  No static issues this past winter, and we don't have a humidifier.  I use my cat as my humidity instrument, and no sparking this winter.  The cat really likes this new floor.  If she had thumbs, she'd give it two thumbs up.  (The previous floor was vinyl sheet flooring with a clear urethane wear layer.  The urethane would permit generating static, based on using my cat-o-meter.  So, in this experiment, the only thing changed was the flooring.)

For comfort in your train room, a heavy pad under the flooring would help.  It does provide a degree of cushioning, and the flooring is not as hard as the concrete.  Being vinyl it's impervious to any water issues, which is good for a basement, as it is good for my kitchen.

It was rather easy to install, as long as you have a basic rectangular space.  The material is a bit harder than the vinyl used for self-stick tiles, so needs more pressure if you're cutting it with a knife.  A simple miter box with a standard back-saw would do this nicely, quickly, and cheaply.  Certainly, there are many power tools that could speed up the cutting, if you have access to them.

I never liked the self-stick products because over time spaces open up between the pieces.  There are wood-look vinyl floor products that also have a sort of adhesive strip just along the edges.  I decided on the click-together style instead.

The flooring was about $2.50 per square foot, but the pad I bought added about 60% more to that.  Several pads were available, and I chose the one with the highest noise dampening qualities.  The flooring has a lifetime warranty.  I think it looks quite nice.  We've had it for about 6 months as of now. 

You'll want to assure your floor is completely painted before putting this down.  The paint provides a degree of vapor-barrier action, keeping humidity from seeping up through the concrete.  Any flooring put down over the concrete will hold this slight amount of humidity and get moldy over time.  Even if you have a dehumidifier in the basement.  Ask me how I know........  I used single-part epoxy on my basement floor, as it's moisture permeability is the lowest of all the floor paints.  We're not talking about liquid water here, just moisture moving through something by diffusion.

So anyway, that's the report from Buffalo, NY!

No Glue Only?

I've installed a fair amount of self-stick flooring.  However, for my current store room off the train room I used vinyl composition tile that required adhesive (it's usually seen in commercial applications).  Since it's the same material all the way through, surface damage isn't very noticeable, and it was cheap compared to using high quality self-adhesive flooring.  It's about 1/8" thick, twice the thickness of the lower-end self-stick products that carry a similar price.

I applied the manufacturer recommended adhesive using a V-notch trowel, which went quite fast.  The adhesive stays workable for a long time.  Cutting and installing the tile is a bit like a combination of working with sheet styrene and cork roadbed.  All the cutting can be done with a utility knife and metal straightedge (I used my scale ruler).

Here's the tile I used http://www.homedepot.com/p/t/100151605?storeId=10051&langId=-1&catalogId=10053&productId=100151605&R=100151605 , still only $.79 per square foot.  Full selection here http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc1vZbzk0/h_d2/Navigation?catalogId=10053&langId=-1&storeId=10051 .

You asked for affordable and easy to install - this stuff fits both, provided you can get past the idea of working with adhesive.  I found it no more difficult overall than using self-stick tiles, with the bonus of greater durability and reduced likelihood of coming loose over time.

"single-part epoxy"

   Epoxy paint is a good way to go if one wants to paint for moisture resistance. I've also seen floor installers lay pergo type floors over a sheet of plastic....DaveBranum

I just walled off a section

I just walled off a section of basement for a layout room and did a lot of research about building stud walls against poured concrete, insulating, vapor barriers, sealing concrete floors, etc.

There's some controversy about sealing a concrete floor (or walls for that matter) completely.  Apparently, the concrete needs to "breathe" and sealing it can cause problems long term.

I'm no concrete contractor, so take it with a grain of salt, but I'd suggest Googling some to see what the prevailing opinion is if you plan on totally covering your basement floor.

painting concrete

For what it's worth, there's a lot of history on fully-sealed concrete.  It ought to be no problem in the home.
I sealed my walls with Dry-Lock to eliminate moisture migration.  The floors were done with single-part epoxy.  (I usually don't put much stock in contractor's opinions, as they're mostly created from folklore, and don't have a technical basis.  Not all contractors, of course, but most.)
Moisture moves by diffusion.  Technically, osmosis, which is the special case of diffusion of water across a boundary.  Moisture will move through the walls and floor and into the air in the basement.  If you're in  a wet climate, or it's the wet season, this raises the relative humidity in the room.  For items placed against the floor, such as various floor materials, the surface temperatures tend to be quite a bit cooler than the room air temp.  So the relative humidity % is much higher at these cooler temperatures.  This in turn makes a great condition to grow mold.  I had this exact problem on the walls before they were sealed.  When the house was built the contractor put an insulation blanket of fiberglass-wool having a foil vapor barrier toward the inside.  The backside of the fiberglass got all moldy and black, and was soaking wet after about 4 years.  So it had very little insulation value and really stunk up the basement.  After sealing the walls, I dropped a sheet of 6-mil polyethylene down the wall, then built a 2 x 4 wall insulated with fresh fiberglass.  And painted the floor.  And keep the dehumidifier running.  Moisture will migrate to the basement down any openings such as ductwork for heating/cooling, and the stairway or other air leaks.  In the summer my dehumidifier runs quite a bit.
If you want to put down any flooring, I'd strongly recommend sealing the floor, and epoxy is the only thing I've found to be a sure thing.  I also think that the glue-down plastic floors might also do the same job.

But if you're looking for soft comfort underfoot, short of taping sponges to the bottom of your feet, paint the floor and put down some kind of carpeting or carpet tile.  Occasional spraying with an anti-static clothing spray will assist during the dry seasons if static should turn out to be a problem.

For reference, I live in Buffalo, NY, USA.  The Miami of the North.  One reason it's called that is we have very humid summers....... and I won't say a word about having a lousy football team...... not a word.