Why are basements scarce in California homes?
In: 6196
as u/ikonoqlast said, you are going to find basements in the north east and northern mid west because you have to dig down below the frost line. In New York, that is like 6 ft and once you are going 6 ft, you might as well go the rest of the way and put all your utilities down there.
Whereas a lot of southern and western construction is all slab. A slab is exactly as it sounds, a flat slab of concrete that you build on.
You also have moisture problems in basements, which is another reason places like Florida don’t do them, besides having really sandy soil which is difficult to dig into. They would constantly need to be pumping moisture out since moisture passes through concrete. Which is why a lot of basements have sump pumps.
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