Ok crawlspace ppl, you won me over!

[bunnymendelbaum]

We decided last night to do a crawlspace. Several reasons:
-We are worried a concrete slab on grade will always be cold and I'm a cold person by nature.
-It would cost more to grade and detail a slab.

A crawlspace will get us warmer floors, we can move the mechanical down there, have extra storage, AND it will be cheaper to build.

Right now I'm thinking maybe we will do 2 crawlspace areas. One shorter 4' one and then maybe one that is 8-9' tall. We were thinking 5' everywhere with a rat slab, but that just seems stupid to lose out on potential basement in the future, right?

I'm super excited about linoleum floors!

[sjh722]

I think you'll be glad you did. It's so much easier for accessing plumbing, electrical, running cable, etc if you change stuff around after the house is done.

8-9' is a basement, friend, LOL. I'd do as much of that as you can. It's so nice to have for storage (although I need to clean mine out, as I have been "just putting it in the basement" so as to not have to deal with stuff since we moved. Haha.)

[bunnymendelbaum]

Jan 2, 2014 11:58:23 GMT -5 sjh722 said:

I think you'll be glad you did. It's so much easier for accessing plumbing, electrical, running cable, etc if you change stuff around after the house is done.

8-9' is a basement, friend, LOL. I'd do as much of that as you can. It's so nice to have for storage (although I need to clean mine out, as I have been "just putting it in the basement" so as to not have to deal with stuff since we moved. Haha.)

So true. We've just been trying to avoid having a "basement", but it will likely be the best option...

Oh my how things have changed from what I said I originally wanted!

[sierramist03]

Jan 2, 2014 10:12:41 GMT -5 bunnymendelbaum said:

We decided last night to do a crawlspace. Several reasons:
-We are worried a concrete slab on grade will always be cold and I'm a cold person by nature.
-It would cost more to grade and detail a slab.

A crawlspace will get us warmer floors, we can move the mechanical down there, have extra storage, AND it will be cheaper to build.

Right now I'm thinking maybe we will do 2 crawlspace areas. One shorter 4' one and then maybe one that is 8-9' tall. We were thinking 5' everywhere with a rat slab, but that just seems stupid to lose out on potential basement in the future, right?

I'm super excited about linoleum floors!

thats the size our crawl space because of the way the house sits on the hill. We do not have a basement and most houses here don't. Our soil is a lot of clay/limestone. The house two up does but it's not very big it's more a storage area. 

[ktzmoh]

I think you'll be glad for that storage. You don't need to finish it to make if so useful . So... If mechanical goes down there now, do we get a new set if plans to look at??

[moolarkey]

Also, even though you would put flooring over a cement slab, it is so much harder to walk and stand on. Our 2nd house was on a slab. It was cold and very hard so if you were standing in the kitchen doing much cooking, like baking cookies, it could really start to hurt. It especially bothered my heels but maybe that's just me.

It will be much easier for access to plumbing etc. Our current house has a full basement except under the family room where it is a crawl space. We're the 2nd owner of this house, the first owner had insulated the entire crawl space and installed dry wall(!) and lights. There is a large opening about 4' up the wall of our basement to get in to the crawl space. They put bi-fold doors on it so that you can close it off. Our basement is finished so this door makes it look nicer. There is a switch on the wall inside the crawl space near the opening, it turns on both the crawl space lights. Having a light in there is a small but nice feature.

And a bonus of a crawl space that you might never have thought of. Our neighbors had never thought of it, they were pretty surprised when we told them the original owner had apparently used it as a shooting range. We found a lot of shot up telephone books and shell casings in there. You just never know what your neighbors are doing inside their closed doors. This guy was a doctor but he was nuts and dangerous but that's another story.

NOTE: the bi-fold doors are only about 4' tall themselves. More like a bi-fold cupboard door.