So guys. I have just watched 7th episode of Duster from HBO and there was this line that it was spooky that there was a basement in a house in Arizona. My question is, as I am European, why is it so uncommon and strange to have a basement in Arizona?
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Arizona is desert
We really don’t have a need for them. We don’t get tornadoes, and storage areas are built above ground easier.
The soil in certain parts of Arizona makes it very difficult, aka expensive, to dig basements. Plus monsoons can flood basements
While many regions of the US have basements, some areas do not for various reasons, in AZ, too difficult, in parts of California, earthquakes
This is of course just my personal experience. I have not once seen a basement while living in Arizona. I am of course talking about small personal basements underneath a house. There are certainly sub levels to large multi-story buildings.
Hard to dig underground there. Unless you really really really want to do something spooky in a basement.
It’s a desert, most homes there are build on slabs or have crawl spaces.
Ground conditions vary across the US. Basements are common in the Midwest because the soil in generally soft. They’re rare in Florida because a higher water table and hurricanes invite flooding. They’re uncommon in Texas because the ground is rocky. I assume Arizona is the same.
Usually a basement is because the home foundation needs to be below the frost line to prevent heaving. That’s not necessary in many places like Arizona.
I know you didn’t ask about Louisiana, but we also don’t have basements because the water table is so high. This is also why they bury people above ground throughout the southern part of the state, most famously in New Orleans. You can go there and take cemetery tours because they are so cool.
<edit: not sure about the north part of the state, but I can’t remember ever seeing one there either>
The simplest answer is it has to do with the soil. It is expensive to dig into – it can be done but there’s a price tag to it.
Don’t know about Arizona specifically, but there are a lot of places in the country where basements aren’t common due to the how rocky the ground is. It would be very expensive to excavate all the bedrock needed for a basement so most people just don’t have one.
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In cold places, the house’s foundation needs to be deep because there are problems if you don’t go below the frost line. This makes basements basically free because you have to dig that deep anyway. In places that don’t regularly freeze, this isn’t a problem so a basement is an extra cost and mosy people don’t bother.
Basements are expensive. Even in other locations in the U.S. a basement is not apart of default residential building.
Lots of places in the southern latitudes of the USA don’t have basements.
Partially it’s because of the lack of need (the neighborhoods tends to be less dense so people get by with shed attics or garages for storage instead of basements) or there’s a thermodynamic consideration.
House in the US south are basically built to be the opposite of European house, the goal is to keep the cold AC in and the heat out instead of the heat in and the AC out.
Since heat rise and cold falls is better to have an attic than a basement sure heat will rise into the attic and can be blown out by a fan, but cold might collect into a basement where it’s useless to the occupants
Basements are unnecessary in desert climates, basically just a luxury. I know in the Midwest and North-East the reason basements are so common is because the frostline pretty much demands we have deeper foundations, so basements are just an expected part of construction. Arizona doesn’t have this issue, plus the soil is harder to dig through, so most construction forgoes them.
We have basement in Wisconsin so we have someplace to put a bar in the house
The ground in AZ is rocks because there is very little soil through which to build a basement. You’d need dynamite in many areas.
Pretty uncommon in the Phoenix area. Both the houses I had there were one story on a slab. Though I did have a coworker that had a basement in a relatively new house in the burbs.
The ground is too hard to dig in. And because basements are uncommon because of this, you see really big attics instead.
I grew up in North Dakota and our house and every house I went in had a basement.
I’ve lived in Texas almost 30 years and idk anyone with a basement! I’ve never seen one! I’m sure *someone* has one, but they aren’t popular. They aren’t a thing here.
Basements are more prevalent in the Midwest. I always thought because of tornadoes.
“Not many people have basements in California”
“I do”
I lived in the Midwest for 70 years, every house had a basement. Now I live in AZ without one. I can’t even imagine how expensive it would be to dig one here. It’s solid rock
If you don’t have a basement, where do you store all the shit you don’t need but don’t want to get rid of yet?! Jk
Im guessing its similar to Texas, There is a hard layer of rock not deep under the top layer and it makes digging very expensive
I grew up and lived in Arizona before moving out of state. My dad and I had bought a house that had a finished basement. They’re not uncommon in homes but they’re kind of hard to find.
Not your question but in the midwest I would find it strange to not have a basement. It’s better to build below the frost line and they come in handy when tornadoes are near.
Hello from (currently rainy) sunny Tucson, Arizona! We have thick clay and heavy rock in the ground out here making it very expensive to dig.
In the Midwest and upper East Coast, basements are standard because deep frost lines, which require deeper foundations to stay stable and to keep utility lines safe from freezing, with the added benefits of being refuge areas for really bad weather like tornadoes and to a lesser extent hurricanes, plus the soil is much more workable than further south, where the soil tends to richer in clay and limestone, and since the frost line is a lot shallower, it just doesn’t justify the cost. My uncle, who was born and raised in Minnesota, wanted a basement when he moved to Texas. Thank God he worked for Shell Oil, because in the end it cost him a little over $70,000 once it was done.
They are common in the Mountain region, but not totally standard; the soil, water tables, and frost lines vary pretty wildly, so you can get whole towns without them and then a few miles down the road, there’s another town where they all have them.
They aren’t standard on the West Coast and Lower/Southeast due to earthquakes (West Coast) and higher water tables.
When I lived in Arizona I did not know a single person with a basement
If I remember correctly it had something to do with the soil there
Not a common thing in the Southwest, but there’s some here and there.
1. Duster is fucking awesome and I’m sad its not getting a second season, but i do like the ending we got
2. A lot of the southwest is earthquake prone, not exactly a good place for a basement
Arizona soil in the desert has a hard mineral accumulation called caliche which is a pain in the ass to dig through. It can ruin tools and heavy machinery if it is too dense. Thats why digging basements is so expensive in some areas.
Very expensive to dig in a lot of places here.
It’s uncommon in plenty of places. I’ve lived in California and Texas and basements are not common either place
“cellars” – Bostonian
For Phoenix, at least, my understanding is that there’s like a foot of top soil, and then most of the city is built on the stone of a mesa. So the construction of a basement is somewhere between unnecessary and impractical.
If there is a subreddit for the show, they might be able to explain what the writers were trying to mean better than we can. I have never heard of the show. The writers may have been trying to be “spooky” because they wanted it as a plot point. But it doesn’t have anything special to do with Arizona.
Scorpions?
At this point I’m surprised most of the homes in Arizona aren’t mostly underground. It’s cooler so it will save on energy.
I live in a large master planned community. There are two houses in the entire area (basically a whole town) with basements. The basement was a $150,000 builder option. The ground is hard.
The soil makes it expensive to dig, and the temperatures are rarely low enough to warrant the cost.
I grew up in Florida and went to exactly one house that had a basement, and even then, it was more like a walkout built into a hill.
Lifelong resident of Arizona. I’ve been in a basement once here, and there was a 50 pound drug deal going on in it. If a house here has a basement, I’d assume it’s been used as a stash house at some point or another. That’s the only reason I can think of to pay the extra to have one put in.
Our [soil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caliche) makes putting in basement’s difficult, and our mild climate means home builders don’t need to submerge the foundations as they would do in colder climates.
Only 2% of homes in Arizona have basements.
The ground in Arizona is heavily eroded and is comprised mostly of rock and clay. It’s rather expensive to dig a basement for a home, so it’s very uncommon to find one. The only person I knew who had one in the 10 years I lived there was a guy whose large home was built for a well-off architect who wanted a movie theater and bar in the basement.