I would comment but I live in NJ. I still don’t understand why Governor Let-Em-Eat-Traffic has not been impeached.
Marbled as in the ground consists of a variety of substrate. It’s not stable and basements shift causing cracks. They’re a financial headache for the builder and the homeowner. If you’re sitting on solid rock it’s expensive to excavate. All sand, great. All clay, great. Mix them up and the mass of the walls settle differently and cracks form.
Yes it’s absolutely an economic issue. I have friends in northern TX/Southern OK who wanted a basement but were talked out of it because of the problems it would bring.
But feel free to think an artificial state boundary somehow makes people too stupid to order a basement. :dubious:
The best option for areas that don’t have stable soil is to build a pit in the garage. It serves as a storm shelter and mechanics pit to work on cars. Nobody cares if it cracks and gets damp.
Unless you’re referring to Florida’s “building habits” pre-Hurricane Andrew (over 20 years ago), in which case you’re undermining your whole premise, Florida’s (and in particular, more hurricane-prone South Florida’s) building code is pretty much gold-standard and the improvements since then have been used as a role model all over.
I don’t know if you are really saying or meaning what you appear to be saying, but it’s jerkish nonetheless, so knock off posting these types of comments.
I just read that the executee buried his victim alive. All I can now do is smirk, and say that Oklahoma made the death too easy.
[quote=“SlackerInc, post:33, topic:687353”]
You are perpetuating a very dangerous myth — kind of the opposite of this board’s purpose, I’d say. Emphases mine:
http://www.ttbook.org/book/transcript/transcript-oklahoma-basement-myth-mike-hancock
It does appear though that I erred in saying 99% of Oklahoma homes do not have them. The correct number is 97%, which I misremembered as the more generic 99%. The essential point remains, however.
The basement thing is irrelevant. What the people who suffered loss from the tornadoes have done is install safe rooms or storm shelters, not basements. Basements are a large undertaking and too prone to being poorly constructed. Safe rooms are much easier to build, and substantially cheaper. If a safe room gets screwed up, it is much easier to repair than if a basement gets screwed up.
I think that much myth building goes on concerning government subsidies for basements. I think that the history of subsidies is that too many people make plans with subsidies in mind, and find that the government will stop giving them out well before the demand for them does. Also, who cares if the government gives a 2800 dollar subsidy for a 25000 expense? Also, if a basement is built, and starts to leak, will the government take care of that?
No, not having a basement isn’t as stupid as everybody lets on. In Oklahoma, irrespective of land types, soil, etc… leaking basements (health hazards) seem to be quite common.
It’s pretty cheap talk to criticize Okies for not having basements and not providing the funding for them. I say **Zebra **should finance a few, even with some wonderful government subsidies, before being so abusive.
I don’t think that the OP is really about what the title suggests.
I hate being a tool, but, I think you should live in Oklahoma City a while before composing too potent a panegyric to the friendliness of Oklahomans. Tulsa is as different from OKC as Earth is from Mars.
One nice thing about Oklahoma- finally, a place in America I can go to be free from Sharia law!
LOL, Try2b.
Why do you say that? I acknowledged that I was impressed (and stunned, really) by the preschool thing.
i lived in Norman and worked in OKC for about three years during college. I still have many friends there and visit often. I stand by what I said.
Hang on a second: Blonde, big tits?
I am such an ass. Here all this time I assumed that handsome somehow equated with gallant. Thanks a lot, Harr, for making me make an ass out of me and me.
ETA: Hang on a sec. I only have Harr’s word for it that he is handsome! Hmmm…
Yeah, here is the thing: I would venture that the lion’s share of homes in Oklahoma were not built by people who live in Oklahoma, or at least not by people who were going to live in them. That seems to be the case around here more and more, homes are built by developers looking for maximum profit for minimum investment, and as far as I can tell, the developers themselves live in Schenectady or Albuquerque or who-knows-where-but-not-here. You cannot really blame Oklahomans, or most any other people living where ever they live, for the state or character of the real estate market (or the hideous butt-ugliness of the cracker-boxes that keep popping up like warty toadstools).
Have you ever poured a foundation before? I have. I can show you my garage which has a 4 ft wall. Almost solid clay the entire length except for one section with a vein of sand in it. I widened and reinforced the base. You want to guess where it cracked?
It’s not just a problem with basements if the underlying substrate is not consistent. A house sitting on a foundation has the same problem. The foundations will shift requiring shimming of the house. The difference is nobody cares if a crawl space has a cracked foundation but they do care if a basement wall cracks. It’s ridiculously expensive to fix if you want a dry basement.
basements aren’t needed for tornado protection and it’s a lot cheaper to build a shelter than spend the money on something that will cause nothing but trouble.
What are the actual risks in Oklahoma? What’s the likelihood of a tornado that you need a basement to survive (say EF3 or above) hitting a particular house? Are we talking about a 100 year disaster, 1000 years, higher, lower?
ETA: This page says a tornado will strike a particular point in the most tornado-prone areas about once every 250 years. But that includes a lot of tornadoes where you just need to get to an exterior room. (On the other hand, those tornadoes aren’t very wide and don’t last very long, so they don’t hit as many points.)
Depends on whether you live in Moore or not. From the Wikipedia link :
Not to be flip at all (the 1 year anniversary of this disaster is coming up), you couldn’t pay me to live in Moore. The 1999 tornado had the highest wind speeds ever measured on this planet at 301 mph (484 km/h). You have to think that within the most tornado-prone areas, their tracks are random. However, random does not mean “will not happen here again anytime soon”.
Another thing I read said (essentially) that Oklahomans are cheap and like a lot of places in the South, they have lax building codes. Up north, the foundation would be required to be built below the frost line, which is deep enough to put in a basement anyway.
Sure I can. If consumers didn’t want to buy them (in what is the most major purchase most people ever make), developers would do better. And in more discriminating areas of the country, they *do *do better.