Basements ???


Coop

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I'm about to show my ignorance and what a sheltered life I apparently have lived. I read so often, posts on here about members mentioning their basements, whether it's about the low ceilings or humidity problems or cramped spaces.  I don't ever recall anyone having anything pleasant to say about their basement :(

So, out of curiosity (and please, I don't mean this to be sarcastic) and lack of knowledge on my part:

 

1)Where, geographically, do basements start (and I don't mean the soil line :D )? I've seen them from members as far south as St. Louis  

2) Why do you that have basements, have them?

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I think it's code in the U.S. to have either a basement or craw space.  Now I'm going to show my ignorance since I'm not sure exactly what you're asking, so we'll show our ignorance together.  Let's jump in the boat and we'll row together!   :lol:

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I don't know how far south they dwindle away, but here in Pittsburgh you can expect every house to have one.  Many of them are unfinished due to being old construction.  Some are dry, some have developed leaks.  Most have the 6.5' height.  A smaller portion of houses have the basement finished and even have carpeting.  They're often some of the best rooms in the house, especially in the summer since they stay so cool.  In almost all cases, the basement is where the laundry room, furnace, water heater, breaker box, water shut off are all located.  In the older houses it used to be where the coal used for heating was stored, which is evident by the small metal coal door on a wall near the ceiling.

 

Do most houses in Houston have attics where you can walk around?  They're pretty rare in Pittsburgh - possibly because the basement is typically used to store things.

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I may be wrong, but...

 

Houses in places where it freezes need to have a foundation that goes down below the frost line.  Otherwise, the freeze/thaw cycle topples your house over.

 

The easiest way to do this is to dig a deep pit that goes down below the frost line, build solid masonry walls (often, with the stones you dug up when digging the pit), and then fill in the pit around the walls.  Then you build your house on top of these walls.  The space in the pit inside the walls is the basement.

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Yeah, down here we have attics that you can walk around in. It's where our a/c and heater unit is. Now, I've never figured this concept out, put the a/c in the hottest spot on the property and your furnace w/ a blazing fire right next to the roof.

OK, so I looked up frost line and it said the depth of the ground where water freezes. And the frost line is 48"? Damn!!!

I had seen Norm and the crew of This Old House work on old furnaces in the basement, and I'm thinking, basement/storm cellar, but folks in NJ & NY don't have tornados, but I never thought about the ground freezing that deep!!

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The foundation wall usually goes a foot or so above ground level.  If you build on a slope, the basement has to go below the frost line at the lowest point, which can mean digging pretty deep to get a level floor.  A basement can be anything from 5' crawlspace with a dirt floor, to a "finished basement" with windows high on the walls.

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Yeah, we have basements up here. My shop is in my basement and I have 9' ceilings, so it's decent for my shop. Can't have basements down in Texas because the dryness of the soil moves and would destroy a basement. Thus, houses in Texas are built on pretensioned concrete slabs that have steel cables for the tension. You're practically required to water you lawn to add moisture to the soil to prevent it. Here, we have frost lines that are deep, so adding a basement is no big deal because the builders need to dig deep anyway. I just happen to be lucky to have a dry basement, meaning it doesn't leak.

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Definitely a traditional vs modern discussion back a few posts. My 1860 colonial was is a very rural town. The field stone foundation was dry layed and clay mud chinked. (Yes, I altered that.) Concrete was very impractical as was mortar in that economy. There are many masonry homes of the same vintage with mortar in the less rural towns nearby. Concrete in economy homes seems to start showing up in the 1940s here. The earliest slab homes are rare 50s homes. Commercial structures follow different norms. Basements as such are a modern concept or at least linked to affluence. Cellars abound in tradition. Root cellars, storm cellars, coal cellars et al. In that model, sub elevation structures are only there to meet specific needs. In flat Indiana, you see explosion of basements not really happening until the 1980s because building coding outstripped the affordability of drainage sumps and more importantly sewage ejectors. I cannot draw any conclusion beyond my region but this is what I see here.

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I grew up in Atlanta. We had a typical suburban ranch house with a basement. My grand parents had basements. But my house is on a slab. I think basements are a better foundation but if the lot doesn't have enough slope to have one end at grade it is going to be a hassle to use it , plus the chance of water/ moisture problems rises.

My brothers house has 1 story above grade in the front and 2 stories in the rear, so the entire back of basement has windows and 2 doors.

I think the price range of the house plus the terrain and a bit of local building traditions is where the line between slab and basements exists.

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Almost every house I have been in has a full size basement. Here in the north, the frost line is deep (min of 48"), so if you don't go at least 48, any post or footing you place will definately heave.

Most people use their basements in my general area and experience. Of course, mechanicals are typically stored there (furnace, hwh, softener, etc). Most people finish off their basements for extra bedrooms, rec rooms, etc. All the houses I have owned (on my 3rd) have had unfinished basements. I prefer this, as I like the area for storage.

The only exception has been waterfront homes, where a slab is used.

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My brothers house has 1 story above grade in the front and 2 stories in the rear, so the entire back of basement has windows and 2 doors.

My basement has a basement.  My house is a row home, narrow and deep.  It's on a slope.  The front of the house has a basement foundation, but that basement level is entirely above ground in the back.  So, it needs a foundation and has its own basement.  

 

9' ceilings in the main basement, but a lot of ductwork, pipes, and electrical all over the ceiling.  That's where my shop is.  At one point, 

I was thinking of putting the dust collector in the sub-basement.

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I bought mine for the untaxed living space potential. The basement, at least here, wont fall into technical living space unless it has full windows/door or something of the sort. I don't remember the full definition, but mine wont fall into it.

 

I gain a few hundred more square feet of living space without having to pay for it on property taxes :)

 

There are small issues with the humidity and potential leaks, but those can be fixed. Luckily, my house came with a 20 year warranty to be water proof in the basement. Humidity, I can deal with that myself as time goes on.

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Here in West TN you will find houses with every type of foundation. 30 years ago, crawl spaces were the in thing, but now slabs are very popular. Our frost line is only 18", so a very deep footing isn't necessary. Basements are found in less than 50% of homes because the water table is fairly high, and in many places the soil does not drain well, so basements are usually damp.

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This has been extremely interesting. I had no idea that basements were that prevalent and would never have thought they had anything to do with the weather. Due to drought conditions 2 years ago, the slab of my house cracked in one area and I had to have it leveled with concrete piers. That was an eye opener. The company had to dig 2' down and 2' under the slab in 23 locations. The comment I made earlier I made earlier about NJ & NY not having tornadoes obviously isn't true after seeing the news in the paper this morning. where several people were killed in NY yesterday. Very sad! 

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Here in Kansas nearly every house has a basement. I refuse to buy one without. Tornadoes are the main reason. In Oklahoma they do not have as many basements because of high water line.

My last two houses I've moved out of were really old (my wife liked the charm of older houses) with converted crawl spaces into basements. They were musty and wet with low ceilings. You could not store much of anything without it being in a Rubbermaid tub. We now have a newer home with a finished basement in two rooms and a utility room. It has a TV and bedroom, stays a consistent 68 degrees and is a great place for a man cave. Plus the family can run down there when the sky turns green and black.

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk

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My last two houses I've moved out of were really old (my wife liked the charm of older houses) ...

Overheard in Southern California during the housing bubble: "We've been looking for a house for over a year.  Every house we like we either can't afford, or it's sold before we can make an offer.  If we don't find something soon, we may have to start looking at used houses."

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Overheard in Southern California during the housing bubble: "We've been looking for a house for over a year.  Every house we like we either can't afford, or it's sold before we can make an offer.  If we don't find something soon, we may have to start looking at used houses."

Pretty soon, houses will be made a disposable commodity. Use them for 10 years, tear down, and build again.

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Pretty soon, houses will be made a disposable commodity. Use them for 10 years, tear down, and build again.

Which is sad.  While brand new homes can be nice, I have come to learn this is a case where new isn't always better.  Around here, you can buy a 40-50 year old, 2500-3000sqft home that is in good shape, may need some updates, for anywhere from $200k-$250k.  Not to mention nice sized yards.  Before we bought a house like this we looked into building or buying a new home in the same price range.  What we found is you would get a house half the size, and no land.  True, everything in the home is new.  However, we looked at some homes by some of the same builders that were 5-10 years old.  It was amazing how many of them had already updated flooring, cabinetry, in some cases even the roof, windows,  fixtures and mechanicals.  The reason being is to keep these homes in a certain price range, the builders tend to put very low-grade materials in the home.

 

Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of very well built new homes in the area as well, with good materials going into them, but these are often priced considerably higher.  Also, in our older home, we have done some updates to it, and are planning on more updates as well.  However, many of the updates we have made we replaced the original, and have always put back in something of equal or better quality that we took out.

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Well we have had a few weeks of uncharacteristically heavy rain here in chicago.  I go down to the basement to check for water and while I see no flooding, it smells worse than a grave digger's butt.  Sure enough, the sump basin that collects water from the drain tile is filled with murky green water, indicating the pump has not been working for a day or two (or more).   Having some experience with this after dealing with problems with my sanitary discharge line check valve (which pumps out the poop water from the basement bathrooms), I quickly figure out that the pump is running but there is a clog in the line somewhere.  For those not familiar, these systems typically collect water from the perimeter of the foundation, drain it into a basin, then the sump pump moves the water further away from the house, hopefully to lower ground so that it does not creep back to the foundation.   I check the check valve and it is fine so there must be a clog somewhere.  Well it is 1:00am so determining the place and cause of the clog is for tomorrow.   In the mean time, I search around for some hose or pipe that is the right size so I can divert the this water into my sanitary basin, which will then pump it into the sewer line (shhhh, I think this is illegal but it is better than a flooded basement).   Turns out my shop vac hose is the right size, so right now I have a total hillbilly hack of my sump pump hooked up to a shop vac hose, which is suspended to the basement ceiling and then drains into the sanitary discharge pump well.     After 2 hours of moving and grooving (this thing was twerking like Miley Cyrus every time it kicked on) the pumps are finally done with their job, indicating the perimeter of my foundation is now dry.   

 

My point - basements are cool for lots of things, but when it rains, it pours total suckiness!!!!

I take offense at your "hillbilly" remark......  That's redneck repurposing, and a roll of duct tape is redneck chrome!  So, there!

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Pretty soon, houses will be made a disposable commodity. Use them for 10 years, tear down, and build again.

16 years ago, I got a job in the corporate world.  It was doing loans for Manufactured Housing.  In most people's minds, this means 'trailer home,' but the term applies to any home manufactured somewhere other than on-site.  In one week, I had refinances and purchases of 20 year old homes for under $50,000.  You learn a lot about people in an industry like this.

 

For example, the same home cannot be put in two different states.  California has a lot of manufactured housing, and most of it doesn't look like trailer homes.  Most manufactured housing (i.e., traditional mobile homes) are put on piers or footings, and a pseudo crawlspace is created with siding to cover the foundations.  However, I have seen homes that have been modified to have a traditional basement.  (There was this one in Montana that was declined because of this very conversion: the lending rules stated the home could not be permanently affixed.  Different product, different loan, different rules.)

 

Locally, there are all the varieties of homes.  Basement, crawlspace, slab foundation, Manufactured Home (trailer, mobile, prefab, modular, and more), tiny homes, and even more.  Local code states that any living spaces in the basement have two forms of exit in case of fire, so anybody putting in a bedroom must make sure the exits can be used (meaning bigger windows, lower wells, and more doorways).  So most people convert them into living spaces like family rooms, rec rooms, or storage.  We're not too different from the Pittsburgh or Illinois examples, but people use them differently everywhere.

 

The first house we lived in in the area was one of the first farmhouses in the community.  When it was torn down, it was 99 years old.  It had a full basement, a secondary chill room (don't know what it was originally for, but it looked like it was used to store the harvest for a few months to get through the first part of winter, and it was always cold and creepy down there), and a cistern outside that was no longer used.  The concrete was probably added twenty years after construction, but the whole house matched.  I'm guessing it was a wealth thing, but other century homes I've been in locally also had concrete.  (I'm assuming it's because of the combination water table and frost line.)  Having come from Louisiana, having a basement was a new addition and a novel concept!

 

I've read articles in various magazines, including one from a model railroader who paid contractors to add two extra courses of cinderblocks to his basement, so he could get a higher ceiling height after finishing.  I believe his finished basement has 8 foot ceilings, and five levels of track going up to that maximum.  Locally, the older homes usually have 6' to 6'6" ceilings, while newer homes usually come in 7' ranges.  Again, the sign of wealth: those who can afford pay for the extra brick to have a bigger basement.

 

Back to the original thought (it's late, and I haven't eaten since lunch, so my mind is wandering).  We've already hit the edges of a disposable society.  20 years ago, the groundwork was in place for this lifestyle with homes.  Sure, you could buy a Manufactured home from 50 years ago, but most of the time it's degraded and devalued to the point that the home really seems to be destined to be replaced after just 15 years.  Tell me the housing boom of the 80's and 2000's didn't pick up on some of those trends, regardless of what codes say?  Yes, codes exist for a reason.  And how many times have we heard tales of the contractors that did the bare minimum to meet these codes?  (How many of us are undoing the damage from that type of contractor?)  Like water dripping on rocks to erode them into pebbles, the trends will work on homes the same way.  This is why I love knowing what I can (and cannot) do in wood working: I know I could build a home if I absolutely had to, even though my job and skills aren't set for it.  (This is also one reason why the tiny home movement is growing.)  Now, if I could only afford to build the dome colonial with the walkout basement with 12 foot ceilings and an 8 car garage with an attached heliport, horse stable, river access, boat house, wood shop, and blacksmith shop....

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