Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Why no basements?

Preventing leaking making sure the walls are correctly poured and vibrated when they are poured. Sealing them correctly having the French drain in and using plenty of gravel. Getting the grade correct and water running away from the building is essential also same way with guttering getting the water away from the building will lessen the chance of anything leaking should something in the other process go wrong. The proper grading and guttering is not a replacement for proper draining and sealing

Or don't stick it so deep in the ground. Better for drainage and termite issues.

We are going with 9' walls and my hole won't be 5' deep. Gives me 4' if level and I will add 1-2' of dirt to drain away from the house. So 2-3' of exposed foundation.

No reason to go 7 or 8' deep and have siding right down against the ground. Long downspouts too.

When I was a kid. My dad wanted to expand his basement/root cellar to make more room for us kids.
The entire family kicked in helping.
He had a Company come in and shore up the house and install a conveyor belt system and we started hand digging after school , on the weekends and when ever we had any time we dug.
when we got finished my dad placed the concrete floor built the walls put up the drywall and painted.
My Brother and I had our own bedrooms and then we had a wet season hit and our basement became a shallow pond.

My dad ask anyone he could what to do.
Well we jacked the house back up, he placed 6 inches of gravel over the concrete floor and then placed another 5 inch concrete slab over the gravel. Installed a sump pump to pump out the water seeping into the gravel.
That pumped pumped on and off for about 15 years and then stopped never to pump to this day.

The ground water dropped and if and when the ground water rises again my sister will have to deal with it because it is her home now.

By pard owns a foundation company, says we will backfill with as much gravel as I can afford. Of course not all the way up either.

The grass-fed basements are the best.

Water kills the grass.

No, just no

I have a full basement, partially finished, poured concrete walls and floor. Tiled the finished area with ceramic tile. Very temperature stable and quiet. I also have a tornado room in the basement, heavy steel door, and the roof of the tornado room is my concrete front porch.

Finished area for my hunting trophies and some furniture, and one of my safes. Separate room for my reloading equipment etc. No sump pump, no leaks in 22 years. I do run a dehumidifier set to keep humidity to 55% or less.

Or just get a good contractor . Problem solved

"one of the very most efficient and affordable homes to build and maintain at least in this area is a berm house , which for those that don't know was basically a walkout basement with a roof."

I know of two of these. Very easy / cheap to heat and cool; but both had moisture / humidity control issues. Any suggestions?

My small house is augmented big time by a basement IMO. Finished laundry room, & a small guest bedroom. Reloading room, work space, a vault room, & parking for at least a couple motorcycles & 2 medium size vehicles.

Looking back on build cost it was 8-10 percent of the total as I recall. Of course that could have increased substantially had we hit the solid limestone that's common here. We didn't.

Growing up I lived in 2 hoses with basements, & saw in my eyes how handy they were. Couldn't imagine not having one of my own. Should a tornado take my house, all I need is some trusses, sheeting & roof material & I'm under roof & secure.

Yep. Drain tile inside of footing and out plus a sump pump solves a lot of issues. I know of one buddy that has 2 pumps.

Any idea if outside of walls were sprayed with waterproofing?

I think construction techniques have a come along way. Most of Michigan has a high water table and gets a decent amount of snowmelt and rain. Our primary home was built in 2000 and has never had water in the basement. Our second house was built in 1961. At that time basements were dug and then backfilled with the same dirt. It’s a heavy clay soil and that house and most of my neighbors homes built around the same time all get water after a heavy rain. The newer house was backfilled with a sandier mix of dirt that drains. The older house with the clay soil when it freezes while retaining water creates a hydraulic effect. It hasn’t caused structural problems but does let water in when the ground is saturated.

It has a sump pump that prevents any flooding or standing water but it’s obviously not carpeted and not suited for a living area or storing items directly on the ground.

You’re using the ground’s constant temp to your advantage. You essentially build a basement but instead of framing a floor system and walls on top, just frame a ceiling/ roof instead.

In an existing development it sure can. When a developer has to deal with rock in a new development, commercial or residential, any blasting that has to be done is done before the first footers are poured. Of course it depends on just how much rock is involved as to how they deal with it.
Around here, if you have cedar trees you know you have lime stone underneath them. It’s a given.
But you are right, When TVA built the Tellico dam the blasting cracked the foundations on houses up to 4 miles away.

Without actually seeing it to know if there's an issue the first thing I would do is a good dehumidifier and see if that takes care of your issue. And maybe I attic fan ventilation system in the roof

You can pay for a lot of juice for a/c for the cost of a basement.

In this dry climate, a swamp cooler works very well. However, a few years ago, my mother got generous and paid for a/c for our house. I couldn't turn her down.

If you can get a cheap piece of property that us solid rock, I mean really solid rock outcrops you hire a guy like me to come in with an Ingersol tracked drill like used on highway cuts or I could easily just use an compressor with an old shaft sinking hammer used for sinking mine shafts and do it by hand. You line drill the perimeter of the basement and put in a few lines across the interior and it can be blasted or easily chipped out with an excavator hammer. The precise line drilling with drill steel will do a fine outline and make busting up the rock much faster as well.

There's also no need for sumps or the like. Dig or drill a spot for a gravel dry well and slope the floor to drain to a trough with an small grate atop and there's never an issue. I know a lot about this and did it as an profession.

The construction guys sitting in excavator cabs chipping away at rock wasting time and money are laughable. Get someone who has real time drilling, boring, and working with ground.

Or just don’t buy a fugking Rock . Fugk that