Are Basements Common? (apartment, to rent, new house)

[WriterDave]

Hi all,

Ummm this might sound silly, but do many/most houses in Hawaii have basements? I say 'silly' because I've lived in both Japan and Taiwan and the tendency there -- maybe because of earthquakes -- is not to have them.

I just realized I don't know if Hawaii has many earthquakes.

And following up on that point, if people do have basements, do they often rent them out to help pay off the mortgage?

Thanks!
Dave

[whynot?]

As a former pool designer/builder on Maui once observed to us, "it's a volcano, basically, so everything is solid rock -- and expensive to dig into." I know of houses that are built on slopes with (what we called on the East Coast) a "walk-out basement" that's partially underground and partially not as the slope descends. One of our neighbors' houses is built with a garage under the main floor, but that's partially due to a sloping lot, too, that allows the main floor entrance on the mauka side at street level then a steep downhill driveway to the lower level garage entrance. And I know of a few new houses in West Maui that have wine caves, but I don't know of any houses that have fully-underground basements. Not to say they don't exist -- I just don't know of any on Maui. I'm sure other islands' posters will ring in, too.

[cynmkolohe]

As far as renting out the "bottom floors" (whatever you end up calling it after being here for a while)...yes, that is common. Many homeowners here do it. Or build with mother-in-law quarters separated from the main house by a carport or garage.

[Jungjohann]

That "Blue Rock", which is all over Maui, can't be dealt with by ordinary means, backhoe won't phase it, even with a pneumatic hammer. You gotta 'blast" . Whynot is dead on the money, friends of mine were putting in a swimming pool up in Maui Meadows years ago, the contractor doing the actual pool work had to hire someone licensed to deal with explosives, owners asked him for a price, no way, strictly by the hour. The blasting ended up costing more than the pool, and then the pool started leaking!!!!! Bummers!!!! Anyways, in all my years in construction over here, I've never seen a house with a basement.

Eh, and Kolohe, isn't the mother in law quarters normally seperated by barbed wire????? Or at least a chain link fence?????

Aloha

[WriterDave]

Thanks for the answers folks!

[whynot?]

Yeah, sorry cynmkolohe, I was reading the OP rather literally, I admit, and thought he meant "basement" in an under-the-house/under-the-ground sort of way. I quite agree that people partitioning off and renting out any logical space is rampant.

[WriterDave]

Oh no Whynot, I did mean that -- actually a basement under the house.

But my bottom line is that I want to rent out a portion of the property, so it's all good in the end!

Now if I can only figure out how to turn a garage into a British pub...

[cynmkolohe]

No worries--didn't mean to sound sassy if I did! Really, the terminology can be confusing when you are coming from the mainland and looking at our tax office data. For example, our house, according to the tax record, has a "Basement: finished".

What we actually have is a house built into a slope. From the front, it looks like a single story. From the back, there is a separate entrance into the bottom floor. So we call it our basement, though a "mainlander" wouldn't see it that way at all!

Hey Jung...whether we get out the barbed wire depends on which side of the family is visiting!!

[whynot?]

Originally Posted by cynmkolohe

What we actually have is a house built into a slope. From the front, it looks like a single story. From the back, there is a separate entrance into the bottom floor. So we call it our basement, though a "mainlander" wouldn't see it that way at all!

See? A "walkout basement!"

[cynmkolohe]

We are calling it our "garden apartment" right now!