What caused houses to go from having crawl spaces underneath to being on a concrete slab, no space underneath?
In: Engineering
There’s probably a few different reasons, though I’m no expert or house-builder. First, maintenance on utilities running through a crawl space has reduced over time, so we typically don’t need constant access to the pipes anymore. Second, crawl spaces lose a bit of heat, but more cold cuz cold air sinks. Concrete loses less either way, but the proliferation of AC has probably affected it. Third, you don’t have to worry about concrete rotting or housing vermin. And lastly, building codes in some areas probably make it more worthwhile to have concrete foundations, or outright ban crawl spaces for new housing.
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