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A basement or cellar is one or more floors of a building that are completely or partly below the ground floor.[1] It generally is used as a utility space for a building, where such items as the furnace, water heater, breaker panel or fuse box, car park, and air-conditioning system are located; so also are amenities such as the electrical system and cable television distribution point. In cities with high property prices, such as London, basements are often fitted out to a high standard and used as living space.
In British English, the word basement is usually used for underground floors of, for example, department stores. The word is usually used with houses when the space below the ground floor is habitable, with windows and (usually) its own access. The word cellar applies to the whole underground level or to any large underground room. A subcellar or subbasement is a cellar that lies further underneath.[2]
A basement can be used in almost exactly the same manner as an additional above-ground floor of a house or other building. However, the use of basements depends largely on factors specific to a particular geographical area such as climate, soil, seismic activity, building technology, and real estate economics.
Basements in small buildings such as single-family detached houses are rare in wet climates such as Great Britain and Ireland where flooding can be a problem, though they may be used in larger structures. However, basements are considered standard on all but the smallest new buildings in many places with temperate continental climates such as the American Midwest and the Canadian Prairies where a concrete foundation below the frost line is needed in any case, to prevent a building from shifting during the freeze-thaw cycle. Basements are much easier to construct in areas with relatively soft soils and may be avoided in places where the soil is too compact for easy excavation. Their use may be restricted in earthquake zones, because of the possibility of the upper floors collapsing into the basement; on the other hand, they may be required in tornado-prone areas as a shelter against violent winds. Adding a basement can also reduce heating and cooling costs as it is a form of earth sheltering, and a way to reduce a building's surface area-to-volume ratio. The housing density of an area may also influence whether or not a basement is considered necessary.
Historically, basements have become much easier to build (in developed countries) since the industrialization of home building. Large powered excavation machines such as backhoes and front-end loaders have dramatically reduced the time and manpower needed to dig a basement as compared to digging by hand with a spade, although this method may still be used in the developing world.
For most of its early history, the basement took one of two forms. It could be little more than a cellar, or it could be a section of a building containing rooms and spaces similar to those of the rest of the structure, as in the case of basement flats and basement offices.
However, beginning with the development of large, mid-priced suburban homes in the 1950s, the basement, as a space in its own right, gradually took hold. Initially, it was typically a large, concrete-floored space, accessed by indoor stairs, with exposed columns and beams along the walls and ceilings, or sometimes, walls of poured concrete or concrete cinder block.
An English basement, also known as a daylight basement or lower ground floor, is contained in a house where at least part of the floor goes above ground to provide reasonably-sized windows. Generally, the floor's ceiling should be enough above ground to provide nearly full-size windows. Some daylight basements are located on slopes, such that one portion of the floor is at-grade with the land. A walk-out basement almost always results from this.
Most daylight basements naturally result from raised bungalows and at-grade walk-out basements. However, there are instances where the terrain dips enough from one side to another to allow for 3/4 to full-size windows, with the actual floor remaining below grade.
Daylight basement homes typically appraise higher than standard-basement homes, since they include more viable living spaces. In some parts of the US, however, the appraisal for daylight basement space is half that of ground and above ground level square footage. Designs accommodated include split-foyer and split-level homes. Garages on both levels are sometimes possible. As with any multilevel home, there are savings on roofing and foundations.[3][4]
A walk-out basement is any basement that is partially underground but nonetheless allows egress directly outdoors and has floating walls. This can either be through a stairwell leading above ground, or a door directly outside if a portion of the basement is completely at or above grade.
Many walk-out basements are also daylight basements. The only exceptions are when the entire basement is nearly entirely underground, and a stairwell leads up nearly a floor's worth of vertical height to lead to the outdoors.
Generally, basements with only an emergency exit well do not count as walk-out. Walk-out basements with at-grade doors on one side typically are more costly to construct since the foundation is still constructed to reach below the frost line. At-grade walk-out basements on the door-side are often used as livable space for the house, with the buried portion used for utilities and storage.
A subbasement is a floor below the basement floor. In the homes where there is any type of basement mentioned above, such as a look-out basement, all of the volume of the subbasements from floor to ceiling are located well below ground. Therefore, subbasements have no windows nor an outside door. In the homes that have subbasements, all of the basement can be used as part of the main home where people relax and do recreational things, while all of the subbasement can be used for storage. Subbasements are much more common in larger structures, such as commercial buildings and larger apartment buildings, than they are in single family homes. It is common for skyscrapers to have multiple subbasements.[5]
Building a subbasement is more difficult, costly, and time-consuming than building a basement as the lowest floor. Subbasements are even more susceptible to flooding and water damage than basements and are therefore rare, except in dry climates and at higher elevations.
Except for Britain, Australia and New Zealand, cellars are popular in most western countries. In the United Kingdom, almost all new homes built since the 1960s have no cellar or basement due to the extra cost of digging down further into the sub-soil and a requirement for much deeper foundations and waterproof tanking. The reverse has recently become common, where the impact of smaller home-footprints has led to roof-space being utilised for further living space and now many new homes are built with third-floor living accommodation. For this reason, especially where lofts have been converted into living space, people tend to use garages for the storage of food freezers, tools, bicycles, garden and outdoor equipment. The majority of continental European houses have cellars,[citation needed] although a large proportion of people live in apartments or flats rather than houses. In North America, cellars usually are found in rural or older homes on the coasts and in the South. However, full basements are commonplace in new houses in the Canadian and American Midwest and other areas subject to tornado activity or requiring foundations below the frost line.
Structurally, for houses, the basement walls typically form the foundation. In warmer climates, some houses do not have basements because they are not necessary (although many still prefer them). In colder climates, the foundation must be below the frost line. Unless constructed in very cold climates, the frost line is not so deep as to justify an entire level below the ground, although it is usually deep enough that a basement is the assumed standard. In places with oddly stratified soil substrata or high water tables, such as most of Florida, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and areas within 50 miles (80 km) of the Gulf of Mexico, basements are usually not financially feasible unless the building is a large apartment or commercial structure.
Excavation using a backhoe or excavator is commonly used to dig a basement. If shelf rock is discovered, the need for blasting may be cost prohibitive. Basement walls may need to have the surrounding earth backfilled around them to return the soil to grade. A water stop, some gravel and a french drain may need to be used to prevent water from entering the basement at the bottom of the wall. Walls below grade may need to be sealed with an impervious coating (such as tar) to prevent water seepage. A polyethylene of about 6 mil (visqueen) serves as a water barrier underneath the basement.
Some designs elect to simply leave a crawl space under the house, rather than a full basement due to structural challenges. Most other designs justify further excavations to create a full-height basement, sufficient for another level of living space. Even so, basements in Canada and the northern United States were typically only 7 feet 10 inches (2.39 m) in height, rather than the standard full 8 feet (2.44 m) of the main floors.[13] Older homes may have even lower basement heights as the basement walls were concrete block and thus, could be customized to any height. Modern builders offer higher basements as an option. The cost of the additional depth of excavation is usually quite expensive. Thus, houses almost certainly never have multi-storey basements though 9 feet (2.74 m) basements heights are a frequent choice among new home buyers. For large office or apartment buildings in prime locations, the cost of land may justify multi-storey basement parking garages.
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