# Choosing a house - How Big a Deal ls a Basement? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 8, 2008, 4:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/choosing-a-house-how-big-a-deal-ls-a-basement/466953 "2008-10-08T04:11:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Anne\_Neville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/choosing-a-house-how-big-a-deal-ls-a-basement/466953/41 "2008-10-08T20:35:38Z")
> [@chappachula](#): > > Sure you can pay a lot of money to turn it into a kid’s playroom or extra space to mount deer antlers on the wall, but _why do it underground?_ Because it’s cheaper and less disruptive to living in the house than building an addition would be. > [@Harmonious Discord](#): > > If you don’t have a basement you likely have to no place to shelter from a tornado. They can say take shelter as much as they want, but people can’t lay in a ditch all night in a thunderstorm. If you don’t have a basement, you should go to an interior room with no windows, or a bathroom (the pipes reinforce the walls somewhat), on the lowest floor of your house. You shouldn’t leave the house- it’s almost always worse to be outside than inside in a tornado. ---
**Author:** ![NinetyWt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/cc9497/32.png) [@NinetyWt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NinetyWt)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/choosing-a-house-how-big-a-deal-ls-a-basement/466953/42 "2008-10-08T21:19:04Z")
> [@AuntiePam](#): > > Basements are common here. My cousin’s house didn’t have one, so they dug out the crawlspace and made one. They actually dug it themselves – buckets of dirt passed out a small window. How did they deal with the foundation walls? Wouldn’t this have dug down lower than the footings? ---
**Author:** ![Harmonious\_Discord](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/74df32/32.png) [@Harmonious\_Discord](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harmonious_Discord)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/choosing-a-house-how-big-a-deal-ls-a-basement/466953/43 "2008-10-08T21:30:05Z")
> [@Anne\_Neville](#): > > If you don’t have a basement, you should go to an interior room with no windows, or a bathroom (the pipes reinforce the walls somewhat), on the lowest floor of your house. You shouldn’t leave the house- it’s almost always worse to be outside than inside in a tornado. Which still is not adequate shelter when tornadoes are about. ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/choosing-a-house-how-big-a-deal-ls-a-basement/466953/44 "2008-10-08T22:54:35Z")
Believe it or not, the majority of humanity doesn’t live in a place where there are ever tornadoes. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/choosing-a-house-how-big-a-deal-ls-a-basement/466953/45 "2008-10-08T23:42:05Z")
Moving thread from IMHO to The Barn House. ---
**Author:** ![Waenara](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/50afbb/32.png) [@Waenara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Waenara)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/choosing-a-house-how-big-a-deal-ls-a-basement/466953/46 "2008-10-08T23:49:54Z")
I don’t think I’d ever want to buy a house without a basement, but I’m from Alberta and I’m just used to them. I currently rent a basement suite - about 500 square feet of living room/kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom. It’s definitely nice in July/August when it gets more hot and humid. It’s finished really nice so it doesn’t feel too much like a basement (other than the small windows). I have nice ceramic tile flooring through my entire suite, and it’s heated by an in-floor hot water system, which is nice and warm in the winter. ---
**Author:** ![Renee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/renee/32/287_2.png) [@Renee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Renee)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2008, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/choosing-a-house-how-big-a-deal-ls-a-basement/466953/47 "2008-10-09T00:02:50Z")
> [@](#): > > We did have a crawlspace in the house I grew up in, though, in New Mexico. Which reminds me: while we were living there, my parents dug out an area next to our house, created a new entryway down to it, and made a sort of downstairs rec room, plus another bedroom for my brother. It wasn’t under the house, so I’m not sure that it qualified as a “basement”, which may have been the problem. Anyway, in many ways it was kind of a nightmare. It got really cold down there in the winter, and the only heat was provided by a woodstove. I have no problem with woodstoves, but the smoke wouldn’t draw well until the chimney warmed up, so you’d basically start the fire and clear out for an hour or more while the smoke cleared (took forever, since there really wasn’t anywhere for it to vent from the room). And the roof leaked something fierce, despite multiple attempts to seal it; the pool table had to be covered religiously, because the cover would often have little puddles on it from dripping water. So, my early experiences with underground rooms have not been very positive. What were they thinking? Really, I don’t get it. Why dig a hole in the ground to create a detached living area? I can’t imagine the reasoning here. As for the OP, I come from an area (Arkansas) where basements are rare due to water table issues and lack of need. Heat pumps work fine for heating, and it would cost the same to just build a larger house as to construct a basement, so why put that extra space underground? I’d much rather have my laundry upstairs than down–in the house we’re building in a couple of years we plan to have laundry facilities in the master bedroom closet–why drag laundry baskets up and down stairs? As for the advantages of crawl space: In a slab foundation, your pipes, etc are burried in concrete. This makes it difficult to fix them when they break. It also limits your flooring choices (you can’t install hardwood directly on a slab) and walking on concrete is much less comfortable than walking on a raised wood platform. ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2008, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/choosing-a-house-how-big-a-deal-ls-a-basement/466953/48 "2008-10-09T02:13:48Z")
There was a tornado this summer, and it was huge news. I think there have been two noteworthy tornadoes my entire life. Yet most houses have cellars (we _do_ use the term basement too, but usually that refers to a finished living area). I’ve only lived in one building, a two-story apartment, built on a slab and it was constantly damp and awful. The rest of the houses and apartment buildings I’ve lived in have had cellars, so I would be very surprised to see a home for sale without one. ---
**Author:** ![usedtobe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ec9cab/32.png) [@usedtobe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/usedtobe)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2008, 6:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/choosing-a-house-how-big-a-deal-ls-a-basement/466953/49 "2008-10-09T06:49:24Z")
Guys, what’s not to love? Me want WANT! [http://mlsmedia.metrolistmls.com/bigphoto/061/80043561\_11.jpg](http://mlsmedia.metrolistmls.com/bigphoto/061/80043561_11.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Whisperer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cat_whisperer/32/4839_2.png) [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2008, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/choosing-a-house-how-big-a-deal-ls-a-basement/466953/50 "2008-10-09T18:40:02Z")
Flooding in basements can be a problem here, too. We got lucky with our house - basement stayed dry as bone through some of the worst spring flooding in ages here. There are neighbourhoods here that are built on filled-in swamps; as you can guess, I’d be putting all my stuff on shelves in a basement in _those_ areas. There are others very close to the rivers; yup, they flood sometimes. It’s something I’ll be looking at when we look at new houses next year. ---
**Author:** ![Anne\_Neville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2008, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/choosing-a-house-how-big-a-deal-ls-a-basement/466953/51 "2008-10-10T18:26:55Z")
> [@Harmonious\_Discord](#): > > Which still is not adequate shelter when tornadoes are about. Beats the alternatives, though. Of course, I’ve never lived in real tornado country, so shelter from tornadoes has been low on my list of “what I look for in a house” (but always there, because I have a slight phobia of tornadoes, and sometimes have nightmares about them). It might be different if I lived in Tornado Alley. I wanted a basement when we bought our house, but not really because of tornadoes. I wanted one because we’re pack rats, so more storage space is always a good thing. ---
**Author:** ![fusoya](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ecccb3/32.png) [@fusoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fusoya)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2008, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/choosing-a-house-how-big-a-deal-ls-a-basement/466953/52 "2008-10-10T18:36:16Z")
It really is hard to imagine a home without a basement. Every home I’ve ever lived in (in Rhode Island, Connecticut and New York) has had one, as well as all of my relatives’ homes. Some of them were finished, one of them was unfinished but then we finished it later on, making one of the coolest hang out rooms I’ve ever seen, and I’ve lived in some homes where half of the basement was livable (media/game room, guest bedroom, bathroom) and the other other half was concrete strorage/utility space. However, I’ve yet to live in a home with a real attic - they’ve always been crawl spaces or levels without safe floors to walk on (covered in that pink insulation stuff). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/choosing-a-house-how-big-a-deal-ls-a-basement/466953.md?page=2)