Fix the leak.
Fix the leak.
Leave it unfinished. Otherwise you can't shoot hockey pucks and bow and arrows, throw the ball against the wall, and you can set stuff on fire when you're welding or playing with wood engravers. It is also easier to pickup the sawdust, and you don't really have to worry about overspray when you need to spray paint things.
My childhood basement was awesome.
But seriously, do you know why you had water in the basement? If so then if that get's fixed I see no reason not to refinish the basement.
I have seen the flooring system you speak of and it would keep your carpets dry if you did get some seepage but I would still try to keep the water out completely rather then spend money on a system that will only mitigate the damages.
Wonkothesane wrote:Kenny_McCormic wrote: Fix the leak.Brilliant! That's a wonderful idea! I was planning on letting it go so it would be like my own personal pond every now and then....
Are you a ginger? Flooded basements are also ginger safe pools 
Do you know the location of the offending leak?
add an indoor koi pond, right under it. self filling! and kids LOVE IT! and if you get snowed in, DINNER! and it keeps the house hydrated!
(I wanted to that the one time my Basement leaked... and it was exactly your case: snow turned to ice, water got stuck on top of it... there is a picture on FB of me with a shop vac, vacuuming up the small pond it created in the back yard.. to stop it from leaking any more into my basement.)
We have DriCore and while it's a nice protection from moisture (and cold feet), it only buys you fractions of an inch elevation off the floor - so if your water intrusion measures more than a few gallons, or if your floor is more than a half-inch out of level, your basement will still flood and everything on the floor will still get soggy.
I had a similar situation when I bought my house and looked at the DriCore. In the end, I ended up tiling the floor over a epoxy vapor barrier. No worries now.
I have occasional water problems here, generally when we get a super fast thaw in the spring. I could fix it by digging, sealing, etc (which is the plan, but that's a lot of work) or, perhaps simpler, would be to build a time machine, go back to 1961 and beat the landscaping guy to death with a shovel.
Anyway- I glued down commercial grade short weave carpet with no underlay, and all I do is suck the water up with a shopvac. No mold, no smell, there is just a portion of the carpet that gets cleaned really well once in a while. Luckily, the water comes in the same place all the time, and we have nothing important sitting there.
FWIW, I havwe used it but not due to water intrusion (homeowner wanted a floating engineered wood floor on a basement slab). Does everything that the manufacturer claims and I would use it in a similar application again.
My concern with this would be that if the water should get in again that 1/8" space would be a breeding ground for mold and mildew.
We have had water in the basement 3 times since we bought this house in 1976. That is why half of my basement is painted concrete and the other is glued down tile.
If the slab was bare I wouldn't worry as the concrete is permeable enough to slowly dissipate a rare leak. However it sounds like it has been largely sealed by the carpet adhesive.
I have used the tiles on two jobs with great success, but agree with the mold concerns.
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