Soft flooring down concrete stairs

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b1004u

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I am wondering if anyone has any experience placing dense rubber mat down stairs in the same way you would run carpet down stairs.

I have a set of fairly steep stairs leading to my basement from the pantry. Half way down, there is a landing with an exterior door coming in from the drive way. As you can imagine, we track a lot of dirt in bringing in stuff from the car, gear, etc.

My wife and I are worried our toddlers are going to hurt themselves going up or down the stairs, so we want to put something down on the concrete, however we don't want to put carpet down because of the dirt. We thought we might put commercial rubber mat down.

Is this a possibility?
 
Rubber sheet flooring really isn't designed to make a sharp bend. If you are successful in forcing it to, it most likely will fail prematurely at the edge.

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i know you mean well but there a couple of problems with your plan---primarily any flooring that is soft must sacrifice durability---stairs especially the nose of stairs wear much faster than any other flooring situation---unless you use actual rubber stair treads---which are not soft in any way--you will wear out the stair noses pretty quick---the other issue is adhesion---if you do not pay a great deal of attention to this issue--(contact cement is your best bet)---you run the risk of the treads coming loose with your noggin as ground zero----my advice would be stick and pad with a dark brown multi colored rug--oh yeah maybe a couple of childproof gates
 
Try insyalling rubber with geese running around your jobsite. I finally finish loose laying the rubber over flagstone in the goozebo, all hand cut and what happens? Goose poo. I think thats poo. Could be something else.
Well thats why the owner wanted it so she could hose it off.

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Standard rubber treads/nosings are not designed to cushion a trip/fall accident. So you're looking at a rubber "sports"flooring that certainly could be worked over/around most concrete stairs. If the step is square is might be necessary to shave or miter A TAD out of the backing. Solvent based contact would be needed at that nosing. The rest of the tread and riser could be adhered with urethane. I have not done this with a sports floor but it's a fairly standard glue down stair method.

There are a lot of brands of rubber sports floor and even vinyl sports floor with cushioned backing.

By the time you PRICE this out though, material and labor I believe you could have a very DENSE commercial padding like Tredmor and a decent commercial grade carpet installed and replaced every year or so til the rugrats stop diving down flights of stairs.

In other words rubber sports floor is not cheap.

I love those rubber floors Ernesto and Floor Maven show photos of and they would be an improvement over concrete but for what you're attempting I believe they are too dense. Typically this is what we put in weight lifting gyms so the guys can drop the bar bells and dumb bells directly on the floor after lifting.

I'd go with carpet if I was you.
 
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Well who says you have to cover the risers anyway? Just the treads would work fine.
 

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