aemeijers wrote:

Only way I would ever build with a crawlspace was if it had a concrete
floor and was tall enough to stand up in. I hate working in
crawlspaces, hated it even when I was young and skinny. My other house
down in Louisiana is on a slab, and yeah, it is a pain, too, but nothing
like the houses on piers (open crawlspaces, basically) are. This place
has basement under the original house, and a (thankfully deep) crawl
under the addition, but they used a backwards-mounted standard basement
window for the outside access, so getting my fat gut in there is a MAJOR
chore.

'Ground is too hard' is nonsense- only valid excuse for not having a
basement, IMHO, is the water table being too high. If the lot consists
of 2 feet of dirt on top of rock ledge, build up the lot. If that isn't
an option, build elsewhere. If you simply MUST build on an undiggable
lot, build the first floor out of concrete.

aem sends...

Neither reason is valid for not having basements in this area.
See my other response in this thread for the real reason. But it
boils down to this: You don't need one, so spend your money on
living space that costs less. If you want one, you can have one,
it will just cost you.

--
Robert Allison
Rimshot, Inc.
Georgetown, TX