Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Cohousing units without basements?

[Evan A.C. Hunt (evanh]

> Some things about basements:

And some replies...

> 1. I do not have a garage, there fore my own tool, workbench, paint 
> storage sort of stuff goes into one part of my basement.  This could be 
> common space, however, I personally like having an assortment of tools 
> around my home.
>
> 2.  Most my basement is used as the kids "romper room".  Children are 
> loud, messy creatures at times, and it is great, especially when a 
> meeting is going on in my house, or other adult sort of conversation, 
> to be able to send the kids down to the basement to be loud in.

For both of these my reaction is the same:  It's an excellent thing for
homes with kids to have a good safe playspace, and it's an excellent thing
for _any_ home to have a minimally-finished (and therefore cheap to build)
area where things can be stored, out of sight and out of the damp.  But
is it necessary, or even preferable, for either of these spaces to be
in the _basement_?  Is major excavation necessary to achieve a house with
adequate storage, utility and play space?  No.

Basements were invented for the purpose of putting foundation walls below
the frost-line; they only acquired their varied uses as storage room,
rumpus room, utility closet, etc, after the fact.  Builders put big
unused rooms under houses for purely utilitarian reasons, but they
skimped on the "extra" space that every home should have.  So people
used the basements to pick up the slack, and then they started to think
of basements as _the_ place to store things and do the laundry and so
forth.  Given the choice I'd _much_ rather have a house with a concrete
slab or a post-and-beam foundation--cheaper, easier to expand later--and
_no_ basement, and have storage and utility space either inside the house
or in a detached, possibly common, garage-type structure.

> 3. Cold air storage.  In the summer, my basement becomes cold air 
> storage.  I open a roof skylight, open the two large basement windows 
> and in about 15 minutes the temperature of the  main floor of my house 
> has dropped ten degrees as the air from the basement is sucked 
> upstairs.  My furnace also has an inside air draw and so I can "pump" 
> cool air into the bedrooms at night by turning on the furnace fan.  A 
> nice alternative to air conditioning.

Yes--and it's a good place to keep potatoes and turnips, too.  That's the
best reason to have a cellar, IMHO.  (And I guess people in tornado country
will have other good reasons, too; I live in California, so I don't have to
think about that very often.)

Point being, a basement is an excellent solution to some problems, and at
best a mediocre solution to other ones.  If the former problems don't
affect your area much, and you can find better solutions to the latter
ones, do it.

                                        eh