Why is slab bad and crawlspace good?

[gball721]

We just bought a nearly 40 year old house in Rougemont, having just moved here from Florida. Our 2003 Florida house had a slab and by the time we put it on the market, we already had 13 hairline cracks in 13 individual ceramic tiles on our floor (most of the main living area was tile) --so apparently the slab had some settling issues. Some of the cracks could have been stress from moving items across the floor/poor tile laying, but I don't think one could use that logic for all 13 of those cracks. Perhaps the soil is more stable for slabs here in NC. Our house in FL was essentially on sandtrap type soil. The soil was basically white sand. Our house here has a full basement, and apparently hasn't settled much in 40 years. Hasn't had seapage with the rains of the past months or so. But will get the real test this summer if we get some serious tropical precip.

[gball721]

Momof2divas... yes, although not a crawl, our basement does have some musty smellage to it. Not really bad, but it's there. I don't know what's up with it, both in crawls and basements, but it's definitely a "feature" of these setups.

[momof2divas]

Thanks I was wondering if we would get the same maybe just not as bad in a new house on a crawl

[gball721]

Good question- I can't say for sure. I wonder what the proportion is of new homes on slabs vs. new homes on crawlspaces? Are more on slabs now (to keep it simple/less expensive to build)? I wonder.

[sacredgrooves]

A few notes.....
From a structural standpoint slabs are no worse/better than a crawlspace. I can elaborate if necessary, but I covered this in detail in several other threads.

If you have musty smells with your crawl/basement install a dehumidifier to reduce the moisture content, usually the culprit.

Slabs are used significantly more than they were 10 years ago. My guess is that the transplants are from areas where they are more common, thus making them more acceptable here. Aside from townhouses and very small homes slabs were almost unheard of before the 90's. Now I see 600k homes with slabs (occasionally) and 300k plus homes relatively often.