By: Barry Herbert
In this article I’ll attempt to briefly illustrate three
fairly well known advantages of basements, plus discuss one that most people
hadn’t considered. While we generally
think of homes when we discuss basements, the same advantages can be applied to
office buildings, apartments or most other types of buildings.
1. Safety from
storms. Some of our newsletter
readers either live in a concrete home, would like to live in a concrete home
or have at least considered living in one.
A concrete home, of course, is the ideal protection against storms.
Unfortunately, most Americans still live in wood frame
dwellings. For those families, the
thought of having a basement to get into during severe weather, such as a
tornado, is a real comfort.
Any corner of a concrete basement is much safer than
anything upstairs in a wood frame house.
A safe room within a basement multiplies that protection many times over. These rooms are often built under the front
porch area, which in many cases already has four walls. Too often these areas are merely filled with
dirt and capped off with a concrete slab creating an unusable space.
A more efficient means of utilizing this area is to place
a door opening in the wall separating the porch from the basement and
constructing a suspended concrete slab over the porch area. This creates an almost impenetrable safe room
for people, documents, and pictures. It
also doubles as a great place to store food that needs to be in a cool place.
2. Economical living space.
Although a basement foundation does cost more than a
house built on a slab or crawlspace, the additional space gained is difficult
to match with any other type of cost / square footage ratio. The same roof that covers the lower level,
also covers the first and second story of the house. The footprint of the house remains the same,
whether a basement is included or not, so there is no additional lot cost.
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This basement contains a family room
and a game room
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The extra space can be finished off and used as a family
room, a recreation room, an apartment for aging parents or almost grown
children, an exercise room or just extra bedrooms. If the entire lower level—or terrace level—is
finished off, several or all of the above rooms can be incorporated into the
floor plan. It is not necessary to
finish the entire lower level immediately.
It can instead wait until the need arises or until money is available.
3. Extra Storage. Sometimes you need extra storage in addition to extra livable space. Utilizing the basement or lower level for
that storage space is very economical.
An added benefit to creating this extra space for storage is that you
may actually be able to use your garage for its original purpose.
4. Energy Efficiency. The least recognized reason for a basement is possibly the best one. Mike Hancock of Basement Contractors Inc.
based in Edmond, Oklahoma, is a registered mechanical engineer. He has given several seminars at the Concrete
Foundations Association’s annual summer meetings regarding concrete homes and
the peculiarities of heating and cooling them.
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Efficiency is attained by circulating air between the
basement and the main
floor.
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In addition to being a registered engineer, Hancock is a
poured wall contractor specializing in concrete homes and basements. He not only is considered an expert by his
peers, but he practices what he preaches.
He has constructed several concrete homes and commercial buildings, and
hundreds of basements. “A basement which is sunk down into the ground acts like
a big heat sink,” he states. “In order to fully utilize this phenomenon, HVAC
systems should be designed to circulate cool air from the basement into the
upper floors during the summer months. Another benefit is the circulation of
conditioned air helps stabilize the humidity in the basement. During the winter months, the lower level
costs little or nothing to heat.”
Basements are naturally cooler in the summer and warmer
in the winter because of the constant ground temperature. Hancock believes this occurrence should be
taken advantage of by circulating cool basement air into the upper floors
during warm periods. Then, during winter
months, the lower level is heated for practically nothing. In fact many homeowners in the north—where
winters are extreme—don’t heat their basements at all when they use them for
storage only. A relatively comfortable
temperature is maintained during some of the coldest months because of the
warmth emanating from the ground.
Indoor
Air Quality. As in any home or office building, indoor air quality is of upmost
importance. Our ancestors didn’t need to
worry as much about indoor air quality because air was constantly leaking in
and around windows and doors. Most homes
and offices built today—especially those utilizing concrete construction—are
extremely airtight. While this makes the
structure much more energy efficient, it also makes it difficult for the
structure to “breath”. Whole house
ventilation systems are available, and are considered by some to be a good idea
in new construction.
In certain parts of the country basements are typical. In
northern states where foundations are required to extend below a predetermined
frost line, much of the wall required for a basement is already mandated. The farther south you live, the shallower the
frost line is, and so it becomes less economical to build below ground— unless
you look at the big picture. This
article by no means details all of the many advantages of lower level living,
but it hopefully will start you thinking.
The
unabridged version of this article was originally published in the September,
2013 edition of Concrete Homes + Low Rise Construction Magazine.