If you’re building a home, you’re probably thinking and deciding a thousand things. What will the bedrooms look like, do you want a fireplace, a skylight, should there be two bathrooms or three? You’re dealing with, you know, the fun stuff. In all of that, you might forget about the bottom of the house, as in the very bottom. A house needs more than just solid concrete foundation at its lower core. You need a sort of nucleus below the house and all of its goings on. The pipe and duct work needs to meet somewhere, and often the power meets at this central location, too. These hubs stay out of the way of the rest of the house, but still need to be somewhere that can be reached to be serviced. So, you have two main choices of how to store this hub of utilities in your home: a basement or a crawl space. Charles Pellaton is the owner of Quality Dry Basements, and he has serviced hundreds of basements and hundreds of crawl spaces, noting advantages and disadvantages for both.
At first glance, the basement seems like a better choice because of the sheer fact that is a whole extra space. If you’re interested in the thought of another room, even an apartment, a basement is a great option. Now you have that serviceable zone for the house’s utilities, but you can also have a recreation room, an office, a little apartment, a mud room and laundry room, a studio – the possibilities are endless. If you’re on a limited budget or have special constraints and you can’t build more onto the house, a basement is an excellent way to score more space in a totally practical way.
So, why even bother with a crawl space? Well, there are certain benefits to having a crawl space over a basement. For example, a crawl space elevates a house a bit, which is basically essential in areas prone to flooding, and an added benefit simply to avoid groundwater, erosion, added moisture, and even termites. A crawl space is also less costly to build than a basement, and can be built faster. So if your construction is short on time, funds, or both, a crawl space is definitely worth considering. You also need to seriously think about what you would do with this lower space going forward. Are you really going to put in the work and turn that basement into a room? Are you going to actually finish the entire basement? Unless there’s really a specific type of space you are intending to use that basement for, you may want to save the time and money and go for a crawl space. On the other hand, you may regret going with the crawl space if you decide you do want that room later.
When it comes down to waterproofing, both need maintenance. Crawl spaces can tend to allow more moisture in, being so directly closely tied in with the ground, but they are smaller spaces easier to waterproof permanently. Basements mean a bigger job. They mean drilling and trenching – but still can be permanently waterproofed. If you make the wise decision of waterproofing as part of the new construction, you are safe with either choice.
When you move in, you’ll have a waterproofed basement or a waterproofed crawl space, but either way it will be the space that is right for you, and it will be protected against moisture, dampness, and the damage that can result.
