No worries, I'm not moving to the Hurricane Belt. Got socked in with Opal in Montgomery, Alabama. Once is enough.
That makes sense. Another mystery of life revealed.
On the one hand, the slab would keep critters from chewing on wires, but on the other hand, when you need to do something, it's a hell of a mess.
That makes more sense, but it seems that you have to be vigilant about the keeping the vents screened and with something a little sturdier than aluminum screening.
ok, which is worse. Crawling on your back in a cool crawlspace to fix an electrical issue, or getting in an hot attic of a slab house in July in the South.
rlz wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@p7g2000prb.googlegroups.com:
errrrr..... depends :-)
Done both - in the south. No creepies in the attic and it's dry. At least you can go up in the morning or later evening when it's cool or plan it on a rainy/cloudy day. Lot easier to bring stuff in as well as move around.
Then again, you can't always plan when you do it.
Went up in the attic once with the AC guy, in the south, 96 (temp & humidity) and sunny. I thought it couldn't get worse. Then he fired up the map torch.
That depends how it is built. In a slab, wires can run in "ducts" or "conduits" - no strapping required - to replace just drag the new wire in with the old in a conduit, or remove the duct cover in the floor - but MOST utilities in on-slab are run overhead.. MOST on-slabs are also only single storey construction (bungalow) so all the utilities are in the attic - and very often also the furnace and central air. Forced air heat requires significant pre-planning if you want floor mounted registers, but in-floor radiant heat is very common in on-slab homes.
It's a toss-up. They should build on-slab housed with "lunch box" roofs in the south. Just pop the roof open when repairs are needed inside. Side benefit - if a huricane takes the roof, just clip a new one on :}
Tell that to my Marine buddy and his son who went coon hunting near Quantico and ending up covered in ticks. Close to 300. Little things can hurt you just as badly as some of the big ones. (-: Squirrels laughed at my first attempts to screen them out of the attic. Now the vents are covered with
1/4" thick metal gridwork of the kind seen on metal stair risers on old front stoops. Apparently if the squirrels were raised in the attic, they want back in very badly and will chew wherever they can catch a whiff of their old haunts.
That makes sense. It also makes sense, as other have suggested, to have basement in an area with a high water table or in areas prone to flash floods. It's sound like areas without basements have some serious "other" issues to consider. When I see interviews with people in flood areas on the news saying it's their fourth or fifth total innundation, I ask myself "What does it take to get people to move to higher ground?"
Are basements really built outside tornado alley just to provide refuge? I wonder if it's a throwback to the days of root cellars and once the trend of basements got going it didn't stop - until it met areas where it was not a good idea.
Watching them would just encourage them. (-:
No, they're just the *gateway* to the end of the world . . . (-"
When you get to be as skinny as you were when you're older than say 50, it's usually not a very good thing. Be thankful for that fat. Well, some of it, anyway.
Mike Rowe was working in a damn tight space - so tight he was getting his butt snagged when backing up. It couldn't have been much taller than 12 or
14" inches worth of space. And all they were doing was inspecting and removing dead raccoon and skunk carcasses. Working under there just has to be grim. What I would worry about is how long it could take to get out of there if you had an accident, got some chemicals in your eye or whatever? Tank crews have a loop on their backs for quick extraction and they're not cramped at all compared to some crawl spaces. Of course, your average house won't blow a 100' crater if the stored ammo lights up accidentally.
That sounds like a good reason. I've never seen rain like I saw in Orlanda, FL when I visited one spring. Had to pull off the road it was raining so hard and even that was just guesswork. I figure the windshield wipers couldn't have kept up even if the wiping speed was increased 100X. It was like walking under a waterfall.
Anywhere the winters are cold cellars started as safe storage for edibles. Then when central heat came along [even if it was just a coal/wood burner in the basement under a grate- the cellar became heat storage.
One of the houses I grew up in had;
a furnace room
a coal room
a cold storage room
Another had a 1000gallon cistern in it. Both had parts of the house that were later additions with crawl spaces.
Don't over-analyze it. Assuming you don't have a high water table, and the ground isn't full of rocks, basements are the cheapest square footage you can add in new construction. You have to put in a foundation system anyway. With modern digging machinery, the cost delta to dig a little deeper, and pour a little more concrete and/or lay another 8-10 courses of block, is trivial compared to the overall cost of the new house. Not at all like the old days when foundations were mainly hand-dug, and the dirt had to be hauled away in wagons if you had no place on the property to dump it.
IMHO, THAT is why basements became popular in the early part of 20th century. The fad started in urban areas, of course, because it made it a lot easier to hook up to city water and sewer, especially if they happened to be deeply buried on the street in question.
Of course, all of the above assumes the builder wasn't clueless about drainage and foundation sealing, or too cheap to put them in, figuring he'd be long gone. I've been in 1930s basements that were bone-dry and odorless, so they did know how to do it back then. I've also been in
The last home my father and us boys built on the family farm, was dug into the side of a slope. One side of the basement is at ground level. I'm not sure if there is a specific term for that sort of construction but it has a spectacular view of the valley below since the house is only 100 yards from the top of the mountain. Dad wanted to build right at the peak but Mom wouldn't allow it because when the project was begun me and my siblings were little kids. There is a cliff at the peak with another spectacular view and it's a very long way to the bottom. It's a wonder any of us kids survived.
On trick I learned right here in AHR is to aim a garden hose on the area you're working it. It really does cool things down even though it makes your neighbors think you've gone loony, watering the roof.
That would be my guess on why they became so popular. Cities like New York, Boston and Philly were immigrant centers and any extra space built had the potential to be rentable. So as you say, the marginal cost of adding a basement had the potential to pay for itself with extra tenants.
Most builders do. (-: I recall seeing one house when I was looking for fixer uppers in the 1980's where the foundation consisted of bricks, bottle jacks and an odd assortment of other supports. I couldn't believe it hadn't been condemned which I believe did happen as soon as people starting looking at it and began asking questions about its ability to get a C of O.
Based on the number of basements in old houses I've seen in big cities, they are the rule, not the exception. As others have noted, once you got to areas where land was cheaper, basements made less sense.
That's an interesting thought. Some architecture student must have done a research project on American basements. Maybe I'll give it a Google.
Yep. There's been good work and bad work since the dawn of time. I would have like to have been there to see the look on the Pharoh's face when the first early step pyramid crashed under their own weight. It took them a while to realize that steepness had its limits.
There was a program on Nova just a while back on collapsing cathedrals. Quite a few of those toppled before they understood the dynamics of flying buttresses (which my nephew thought had something to do with fast, fat waitresses the first time he heard it).
In those cases it's not necessary. The ledge *is* the frost footing. Anchor to it.
Nonsense. As others have pointed out, you still need to get the foundation down below frost, so a basement is essentially free; just dig out a little more dirt (and often use it for fill on the same lot).
Ever notice how many of those are in the Southeast? No need for an 8' frost footing in GA. HGTV comes out of Atlanta, IIRC.
My current house (100mi from Atlanta) is on slab. About half around here have crawl spaces and basements are rare. The only house with a basement that we looked at when we bought this house was built into a cliff. It looked like it was going to slide down into the abyss any minute. A 20' high retaining wall was all that was holding it onto the hillside. OTOH, the real reason we didn't buy it was that SWMBO didn't like the kitchen. ;-) It had a 2300ft^2 unfinished basement that I would have *loved*.
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