Are there really houses without basements in Maine? (Bangor, Winthrop: for sale, mobile home)

[family first]

Hey folks, I was looking at some houses on the internet for sale in Winthrop and came accross a 50's "ranch style" home on some acres. It is a beautiful home that has been on the market a very long time. All the homes I have looked at have had basements either finished or not. This home apparently does not have a basement and that struck me as odd. What percentage of homes in Maine don't have basements (stick built)? I can't tell if this is why the house isn't selling or if there are other factors. Curious???

[retiredtinbender]

It's an oddity as far as I know but it does happen. I've seen some small capes (18x24) built on slab but mostly additions. And only one that I know of with heat in the floor. Not a very common occurance up this way.

[GarlicGuy]

More often than not most houses up this way have cellars. The house next door to me is on a slab. It's a lot cheaper to pour a slab than to dig a foundation. Sometiems if drainage is done properly a frost wall was also omitted. The exceptions comes into play when there might be ledge near the surface and blasting is not an option. Another reason would be if the ground water table was high or near a wetlands pouring a slab would eliminate a wet basement most of the time. If I'm not mistaken most of the houses in Capehart in Bangor, which used to be former base housing, are on slabs. I can verify that with one of the guys at work who lives out there. So its not as often to see a slab but also not unusual.

[retiredtinbender]

I believe that's right, GarliGuy. As far I know the military built all except a few officers housing on slab. Saved time money and they did it everywhere. North, south, overseas; it didn't matter. And I only knew of one base that had heat in the floor and that was N.J. Pease and KI Sawyer didn't nor Bentwaters England. Jersey housing had the best heat I ever had in the miolitary. Kept my feet warm all the time. Not sure abouot Ft Dix. Maybe Coastal knows.

[Zymer]

My house just has a "crawl space", which gets rather wet at times.

[island mermaid]

I was just going to mention crawl spaces. Mine has only that, it's right on the shore. Too much ledge would have made it impossible to blast.

[Valley Living]

I'm on a slab as well. However I'm built on ledge and unable to build a slab unless I blasted. My house is very solid and has heated flooring as well as a 4 foot crawl space. Nice thing about slabs is that additions are easily built and if you heat the slab your heat is even throughout the home.

[Northern Maine Land Man]

I would say that fewer than 5% of Maine homes lack cellars. It could be one percent. My house was built in 1885 and has a full basement under the main house. The present kitchen area was built later and has a crawl space. I recommend that anybody having a crawl space put down a layer of 4 mil or thicker plastic over the ground. The basement will be much dryer. If you have an old house with a dirt floor in the cellar I recommend a layer of plastic and a layer of crushed rock on that. The cellar will be dryer and you won't track dirt up into the house from the cellar.

[Submariner]

Our house plan called for a fullsize basement. But the sitework contractor hit ledge. So our basement turned into a crawlspace.

One property that I had made a bid on turned on to have far too much ledge. The Septic Design Engineer had no problem with the idea of doing the leechfield over ledge, but the pipe running to the leechfield would have needed to be deeper. He was quoting very high numbers as the expense of blasting a trench. I backed out from buying that property.

[flycessna]

I've seen quite a few homes w/out a basement.....some of them very nice....but it is certainly not the norm and I wonder other then some savings when building what would be the benifit???

Since there are a lot of mobile home parks in Maine and a lot of people who end up putting a mobile home on a slab on a piece of land the own there might be skewed percentage of homes with out basements that way too but IDK??