Crawl space or slab? (2015, prices, vent, inexpensive)
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I have a two story wood framed home with slab floor in a hot place and its amazing how it can be 68 degrees downstairs when its 100 outside.
no A/c here and upstairs gets 86 while its 68 one flight down.
Less chance of house "walking" off its cripple walls in a big quake. Cripple wall is a short wall foundation some homes have to raise floor level about 2-3ft. Needs LOTS more earthquake prevention such as bolts and metal braces. Also, crawl spaces are a place for water to hang out/critters/spiders but is great for adding plumbing later or heating ducts, elec.etc
I say go SLAB if you can. make sure they really prep ground correctly and drill down to bedrock if a drilled foundation (slab) is called for.The new moisture barriers are way better than in past.
As you get older you would notice your legs, feet, back, etc. will not bother you so much on a wood floor opposed to a slab, and wood is much more forgiving than concrete if you fall.
Last edited by leilaniguy; 09-17-2017 at 07:50 PM..
I haven't. All houses with basements where I live are on uneven lots and I prefer level lots.
I don't think a "level lot" exists. I think I know what you're saying, but the odds that they are totally "level" are unlikely. This is just as true as the four walls in your home never ever exactly equal a square.
The thing with crawl space is on houses I looked, portions of floor creaked.
A friend went under his house and screwed in wood between the joist under the squeaking area to give the flooring more support. The problems went area.
Please advise the name of the plumber who installed the system that never needed attention in half a century.
Our plumbing was copper and was installed by a plumber who was a friend, with my dad working with him. There was never the slightest trouble under the house with the plumbing or heating ducts. All the metalwork in the house was installed by my dad's brother, who had just retired as a metalwork contractor. He brought a truck with metal stock and equipment and made it all on-site. He even dug five, 60-foot long drain-field ditches for the downspout drainage.
The only plumbing leak came outside the house, where the water intake pipe was positioned right below a gap between two drain-field tiles. Over a 45 year period, they dripped the slightly acid water from a maple tree onto it and two small pinholes opened up. But the leaking, pressurized water went right back up into the gap in the tiles and dispersed down the line, never showing any signs of a leak above ground. I dug up 30 feet of a concrete patio, trying to find the leak, without success. But I finally found it, by putting my ear to the ground all along above the buried pipe and was able to hear it blasting out of those holes. The only way I knew there was a leak in the first place, was that our pump ran three times as often as it had before and ran even when no water had been used.
crawl space is wasted space to me..not to mention it's almost unusable for storage..and forget trying to get around in there once you get older..my last house had a crawl space..never again..
I like the solid feeling of a slab (hate any floor bounce), but as said you most definitely don't want to have any issues that require busting it up.
I flat out hate crawl spaces, especially low, damp, nasty ones. I have installed well pumps, pressure tanks, added insulation, and repaired structural components in crawl spaces, and don't want to ever buy another home with one... I actually set that as a deal-breaker term, when searching for a new home. I'm a 100% basement fella, and although they sure can and do have potentially serious and costly issues, I'd rather deal with them over a traditional crawl any day.
As you get older you would notice your legs, feet, back, etc. will not bother you so much on a wood floor opposed to a slab, and wood is much more forgiving than concrete if you fall.
OMG this is so true. Figured this out the hard way. I'm in a serious search for a house in a low inventory market gone wild area and its taking months longer than I planned. That said I still won't consider a slab. (Or any multi level, you get both constant stairs and bugs in the half basement living space worst design ever!)
Any foundation can have issues. Crawl spaces, yes, can have critters and bugs. But I knew a woman who's ranch that had been built in a development that must have once been a swamp. She was on a slab but no matter how dedicated she was about addressing any kind of crack (yes slabs crack) she would get HUGE water spiders in the house. She has done every kind of mitigation for wetness that can be thought of all around her foundatiion, yard. Still happens.
I live on a slab now and I can feel some sort of big dirt lump under the carpet. Ants? IDK I haven't seen any. Also (totally different state) since the slab is no kidding ground level I get wolf spiders moving in the fall.
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