Are there basements in houston

Detailed information about all U. View detailed profiles of: Conroe, Texas. Center, Texas. Tool, Texas. Do houses in the Houston area have basements? Center: buying, theatre. User Name. Remember Me. View detailed profile Advanced or search site with. Search Forums Advanced. Page 2 of 4. Advertisements I know I've posted this before on another thread, but in the north people call 2nd story gamerooms "Texas Basements.

Location: Beautiful New England 2, posts, read 6,, times Reputation: Location: Lake Conroe, Tx posts, read 3,, times Reputation: Quote: Originally Posted by Lake Conroe resident They have a hard enough time keeping the stuff that's above ground from flooding Quote: Originally Posted by tstone I couldn't imagine a true basement ft deep around here.

Quote: Originally Posted by Wysiwyg the question is where will you dump all the earth displaced by the basement especially when the terrain is all flat. After making his way to Texas, Peewee finds out the hard way that there's no basement in the Alamo.

If Peewee had known just a little bit about Texas real estate, he would have known that most homes in Texas don't have basements. According to the Dallas Morning News , there are a few very good reasons for this particular real estate quirk.

First, in some parts of the state the water table is too near the surface of the ground to build a water-tight basement and no basement may be better than a leaky, flood-prone one.

In other areas of the state, there's damp clay soil that can push into basement walls, causing them to crack if not built correctly with the help of an engineer. There's also bedrock that looms near the surface in much of Texas that require digging through it for a basement, which makes the whole process just too darn expensive.

Similarly, the frost line — the point in the dirt where the soil does not freeze in the winter — is much shallower in Texas than up north.

And how much more expensive? These questions are part of Curious Texas, an ongoing project from The Dallas Morning News , which invites you to join our reporting process. The idea is simple: You have questions, and our journalists are trained to track answers.

Bill Bettis, president of the Greater Fort Worth Builders Association, said there are several reasons why we don't see basements in Texas — one of those reasons being Texas culture. Besides not being accustomed to having basements, Texans also typically have more space to build a larger home.

You have to go either up, down or both. The upfront cost to build a basement is also more expensive in Texas than up north, Bettis said. However, he said the benefits of a building a basement in your home make the cost worth it in the long-run. The heating and cooling is virtually nonexistent.

The only thing you need to have is ventilation. He said many Texans are afraid they'll have to deal with flooding or cracking issues if they build a basement, but these things only happen when basements are built incorrectly. Phil Crone, executive director for the Dallas Builders Association , said basements are also not as common in Texas because the frost line — the depth below the ground where the soil does not freeze in the winter — is much shallower in Texas than up north.