Comments on: Why don’t British homes have basements?

By: Mr Truth

Mr Truth — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 10:00:16 +0000

We get several funnel clouds F0 a year as a result of cold air convection which mainly is usually up in the Portland area and the 1-5 corridor.

By: Mr Truth

Mr Truth — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 09:58:46 +0000

Basements were mainly for tornados as I was taught and my Dad has been in one as a result of one as being from Ohio.

Here in Oregon we also don’t have a lot of basements except for pre 1950s homes which are used as *multipurpose* or MP rooms.

I think part of the reason why England doesn’t have basements widespread is a lack of moderate to severe tornados.

I am sure only a few times a year somewhere in the big UK there is a few funnel cloud sightings and even rare……..DAMAGE!

I know Oregon gets funnel clouds and Vancouver WA had a damaging tornado in JANUARY a few years ago and it was ALL OVER the news.

By: Yank

Yank — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 12:27:40 +0000

I don’t know if it was deliberate or unintentional, but “shooting peasants” is rather funny.

By: Oli

Oli — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 23:11:06 +0000

i wonder about the basement thing sometimes, my last place was 500 years old and did not have one, but it is true that most english houses do not have basements. This in itself is probably because it is so much easier to build up than down.

House size wise, I am not sure why houses generally do not go higher than than the ground and first floor. But being british, and knowing our flaws, i assume it might circle the fact that it would be rude to others to have a slightly larger house than others. Either you keep in line with the norm, or you build a bloody big mansion and shoot peasants for sport.

By: NFAH

NFAH — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 11:42:17 +0000

The lack of storage space here drives me crazy! However, the basement thing is not universal in the US, we used to live on the East Coast in a reasonably large but totally basement-free house. Which was always interesting in the rare event of a tornado warning, in which case we had to hide out in the utility closet under the stairs to the second level.

What I don’t understand is that if they are not going to have basements, why not have more third stories like you see in some places in the US where similar building styles (brick attached or semi-attached) dominate, as in Georgetown, Washington, DC. That would add quite a lot of space for no more real estate!