I found them in the rotten, damp plywood counter top I replaced a couple of years ago. Don't know how they got there. We live in the dry Central Oregon desert.
Bet there is rot in the walls and counter top.
Paul
Especially for a basement apartment, probably badly built with water leaks and condensation on basement walls behind the cabinets resulting in rotting wood and who knows what. If she freaks out at the sight of bugs, probably she should have not rented such a poor place. As long as the conditions remain, the bugs will increase and the smell of mildew will permeate the entire apartment. Complain to landlord long and loud, be the squeaky wheel to get attention, but be prepared for a real mess and all the bugs to escape.
He didn't say she lives in a basement apartment. He said the "floor is below the outside soil grade by two or three feet". See here for something similar.
http.//media.rent.com/media/property/1174/1174489.jpg
Note the location of the first floor windows. Those are not considered "basement apartments".
----Android NewsGroup Reader----
Walk in the front door, go downstairs to enter. Sorta basementy.
On Wednesday, July 17, 2013 11:53:17 AM UTC-7, Rebel1 wrote:
wrote: >>>>> My g/f finds a centipede in her kitchen's double-bowl stainle ss sink >>>>> many mornings. Before going to bed, she plugs both drains wit h >>>>> standard >>>>> stoppers (so they can't be coming upwards from below the drains) and >>>>> dries both bowls. >>>>> >>>>> She believes that if s he leave the fluorescent ceiling light on all >>>>> night, there won't be c entipedes in the morning. Still need many more >>>>> night to confirm that theory. >>>>> >>>>> She lives in an apartment whose floor is below outside soil grade >>>>> by two >>>>> or three feet. (The apartment still has full- size double-hung >>>>> windows.) >>>>> Just moved in two months ago, so she doesn't know if this is a >>>>> long-term >>>>> problem. >>>>> >>>>> I've made a casual inspection around the outside perimeter of her >>>>> apartmen t. Nothing obvious (like cracks or wall penetrations or >>>>> termite >>>>> mud tubes) to my amateur eye. Inside, under the kitchen sink she >>>>> doe sn't >>>>> see any activity. >>>>> >>>>> While the recent weather in centra l New Jersey has been humid, the >>>>> real >>>>> question is how do the bu gs find their way into the sink? They are not >>>>> falling from a hole in the ceiling above the sink. There is a >>>>> double-hung window above the f aucets, but it's always closed. When >>>>> I was >>>>> there last night, I didn't think to inspect for openings at the bottom >>>>> of the window fram e. >>>>> >>>>> Even though she knows they eat many harmful insects, she wan ts them >>>>> OUT. >>>>> >>>>> Thanks for your suggestions. >>>>> >>>>> R1
from the floor, up the doors below the sink, and into the sink. >> >> >> Di dn't you say, >> "Before going to bed, she plugs both drains with standard
dries both bowls"? >> Are they pushing the stoppers out? :-) >> > > > Disre gard the above comment. Senior moment! That's exactly what she does. And th e stoppers are in place in the morning. She just told me that if she fills the sinks with water, the water stays in them "forever." In other words, th ere are not small openings in the stoppers big enough for a 'pede to crawl up through.
Note: google access is screwing up everything ...again!
Recommend barrier type spray, stumbled across Bug Barrier by Raid at Walmar t with an 'introductory pricing, so tried and was surprised to see how effe ctive it was. Here in AZ EVERYTHING likes to crawl through the 'high end' w indows and sliding doors. Constantly find centipedes that only make it abou t 6 feet into the house. Barrier lasta 12 months, but I've been putting it on every 6 months. Seems the centipedes find some' opening and then head fo r the water in the sinks.
I've heard Home Defense at Home Depo works well too.
Just for fun tell her the centipedes crawl across her silverware in the dra wers on the way to the sink. No, that's TOO mean.
Most basements are not totally underground, sometimes only 2, 3 or 4 feet in the ground depending on conditions in the area and building design. In my area 2 to 3 feet is still considered a basement apartment.
Having lived in both a basement apartment (which sucked) and a first floor garden apartment...and currently having a "not totally underground" basement, I respectfully refrain from referring to a first floor garden apartment as a "basement apartment". It is not in the "basement" of the building.
Trust me, a basement apartment feels like a basement apartment, a first floor garden apartment does not.
If you do a Google image search on 'basement apartment' you will see a lot of common features: fewer windows than "non-basement" apartments, smaller and higher windows, soffits covering ductwork, and very often a staircase right in the apartment. Not every basement apartment fits that description, but most do. Most are in spaces that were once basements and then converted to apartments.
The first floor garden apartments typically have full size windows at normal height inside the apartment, windows in every room (depending on the layout), no staircase inside the apartment, etc. The building I lived in only had four apartments (2 up, 2 down) so every apartment was a corner apartment with full size windows on 3 of the 4 walls including a picture window in the living room, and 2 corners made up of a full size window on both walls. You are not going to find that kind of window layout in a basement apartment.
"Sorta basmenty" is not the same thing.
I speak from experience, having lived in both a basement apartment (which sucked) and a first floor garden apartment as shown in my link, although the buildings only had 4 apartments in each. Trust me, a basement apartment feels like a basement apartment, a first floor garden apartment does not.
You are wrong according to the NYC DOB. If the floor level is below the soil level by even the slightest amount, it is called a basement. If the ceiling level is below the soil level then it is called a cellar.
And it applies even if only one of the sides the floor is below the soil level. In my case, on the ground level floor, the floor and soil are level in the back. In the front the floor is one foot below the soil. The DOB calls it a basement. I am listed as having a cellar, a basement, and three floors.
I don't get anything on that link. But you can't expect someone marketing an apartment to use the word basement. It has negative connotations. I'd go with what the buildings department uses.
Don.
The link is borked. No dot after http. Firefox was perfectly happy when I copy pasted the link without the http.// part.
My made up word was basementy. Can't see any reason to drop an "e".
I was trying to point out that some people are going to think basement, others, maybe the landlord, are going to deny it.
Clearly a case of gray. Not black and not white.
Try this link, just for reference.
I'll go with your definition of a basement, and since this was an apartment complex, I guess that technically the first floor apartments in that picture could be called basement apartments, but I'm not yet convinced. I may make a few phone calls tomorrow - both to the town and to the complex I used to live in - out of curiously.
While I rarely cite Wikipedia as a reference, this link defines a basement apartment they way I think most people do.
This definition says "an apartment below the ground floor of a building"
In addition, many web dictionaries define the "ground floor" as:
1: the floor of a building most nearly on a level with the groundSo let's consider the apartment I used to live in. Similar to the building pictured in the link, to enter the building you had to go up a 1 step to the stoop, then 1 more into the building itself. Once in the building, I would go down 3 (4?) steps to my apartment. To go to the upper apartments it was at least 4, maybe even 5 steps.
I know what the building code says about what a basement is, but in these types of apartment buildings the lower apartment is closer to level with the ground then the upper apartments. Therefore, I would consider the lower apartments as "ground floor apartments" as opposed to "basement apartments".
I also think - but admittedly don't know yet - that many towns have different requirements for apartments in the basement of a building than they do for the lower apartments in a garden apartment complex, even if technically that portion of the building is considered a basement by code. My gut feel at this point is that those would not be considered "basement apartments" even by the municipality. I'll report back what I find out.
Thr's a vry good rason to drop th e: It was a typo.
I agree. As I just replied in Don's post, I'm going to call the town and the complex I used to live in to see what they say about the lower level apartments in a garden apartment building. I'll be surprised if either one refers to them as basement apartments, since I believe that the town has very strict rules about basement apartments and possibly even a specific definition. There may be some "conflict" between the definition of "basement" and what they call the lower level apartments in a building where technically the first floor is a basement. I'm curious. I'll let you know what I find out.
Well, certainly no one calls these apartments basement apartments. I'm just citing the building code.
Here the real estate people do use the term English basement for a floor that is mostly above ground. Where I have two or three steps down to get to the bottom level, an English basement would be about six steps down.
Which a building here has mostly depends on when it was built. The ones before 1900, like mine, were two or three steps down. On the ground floor there would have been the kitchen, a butler's pantry, and a family dining room. Some in a back extension had a servant's sitting room and a servant's lavatory. On the parlor level (up the stoop) there was a formal dining room with a dumb waiter in a closet. The other closet in the dining room may have had a sink.
After about 1900 they went to only a dining room on the parlor level. The kitchen was in the back. The English basement has the furnace and water heater in the back, and those houses do not also have a cellar.
The only requirement I know about here is a bedroom must have a window. If it is below ground some sort of skylight may suffice. When they convert large floor plate office buildings to apartments they sometimes end up with inside rooms. They get called an office.
Don.
What chaos. I think there should be either state or federal regulation of how many legs they have.
Well you could leave the silverware on one side of the sink and see if the centipedes crawl over it, or if they are repelled by silver, like Dracula is iirc killed by a silver bullet.
I called three places today: the XYZ apartment complex where I used to live, the building department of the town where the complex is located and the Fire Marshall's office in the same town.
Even though it was the last call that I made, I'll tell you what the nice lady at the apartment complex said first, since it is what we all expected she'd say: They do not refer to them as "basement apartments". They refer to them as "garden level" apartments. She added that even if they were technically basement apartments by some code definition, they are not what she thinks of when she thinks of basement apartments. She thinks of basement apartments the same way I do: an apartment under a structure such as a house or a store, in which you actually feel like you are in the basement of a building. All in all she was very friendly.
The first call I made was to the town. What's interesting is that town's definition of a basement is slightly different than my town's and apparently NYC's. My town (and NYC) uses the "floor below grade, 50% of the space above grade is a basement, 50% below grade is a cellar" definition. The town I called lists the definitions on their web site as:
Basement: floor below grade Cellar: Same as basement
When I discussed the definitions with the gentleman from the building department and asked if they had a definition for a "basement apartment", the answer was "No, we don't, that's a question for the Fire Marshall's office." When I asked if he considered the lower apartments at the XYZ complex to be basement apartments, he said that personally he didn't but it really was up to the Fire Marshall. All in all he was very friendly.
I then called the Fire Marshall's office in that same town. All in all the guy i spoke with wasn't very friendly. He basically said that they "follow the NYS definition of a basement and a cellar and that both town's definitions should be the same because all towns in our county follow the NYS codes and unless you have a specific reason for wanting to know if the apartments at the XYZ complex are considered basement apartments why are you wasting my time?" Well, it didn't go exactly like that, but it was close. I thanked him very much for his time and very nicely wished him a good day. After all, I really was wasting his time, so there was no sense in going any farther.
Bottom line, I can't seem to find a definition of a "basement apartment" on any town's website, but admittedly I didn't spend hours looking. I did see some mention of "accessory apartments", but these appear to be any apartment that is part of an owner occupied dwelling, with just the one apartment added, regardless of whether it was in the basement, cellar, garage or an addition on the house.
So for now, I'm going to stubbornly continue to *not* refer to "garden level" apartments as "basement apartments" even if technically they are in the basement of the building. Since I once lived in a *real* basement apartment, under a house, with tiny windows and all of the dankness a basement apartment brings to mind, I have a hard time considering the garden level apartment I lived in to fit the same definition. I may be wrong, but I'm OK with that.
That's a great idea, looking at the bottom of the counter. I'll be there tomorrow and look.
thanks,
R1
How many people anticipate this kind of problem?
As long as
Actually, the bottoms of her double-hung windows are about three feet above the soil. So her apartment is higher that the bottom units in the photo.
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