It would be great to have a basement here in AZ just to escape the summer
heat. Several days in July my thermometer read 117.
I grew up in Michigan and started sleeping in the basement because my dad
was to cheap to run the heat much. I loved the somewhat constant temps down
there.

There are always remodeling work arounds if you don't have a basement to run
utilities through.

cm


"Tony Hwang" wrote in message
...
HeyBub wrote:
cm wrote:
Almost every home in Arizona is built without a basement. Life goes
on here.

I'm in Houston. Houston is built on 500' feet of clay... before you get
to sandstone. The tall buildings downtown are constructed on "floating"
foundations and not anchored in bedrock.

The tall buildings here have basements - that's what holds them up! But
nothing shorter than about five stories has below-ground construction -
certainly not residences, three-story condos, apartment buildings.



Hi,
Up here in Calgary is pretty similar. Clay or sandstones. No wonder we
have kazillion lakes small and big and ponds every where. One reason they
can't build subways. Downtown high rise commercial buildings are like
yours with mandatory bilge pumps deep in multi level basement(parkade). I
am a life time ham and due to the soil condition hams here have problem
with poor electrical ground which affects our antenna arrays performance.