In my area, basements in the 100+ year old houses are hand dug and are typically very short. The discussion has come up on more than one occasion where one person or another said, “That’s a crawlspace, not a basement.” Or, “That’s a basement, not a crawlspace.”
Last example: House built in ~1840’s. 300 sq ft single room ~basement….or crawlspace…, the rest of the footprint of the house is a crawlspace less than 12” high. The entry door from outside is 4’10” tall, ceiling height is 5’8” tall. There is a set of stairs going into it. Furnace, breaker box and water tank are in this area. It could never be finished for living space. It has a concrete floor and 22” thick sandstone walls. the ceiling is log floor joists for the room above.
Would this be, by definition, a basement or a crawlspace? Is there a specific official definition available to cite? This is not part of the inspection, it’s a topic that has come up several times in this area with old houses and short basements, I mean crawlspaces, etc.
I agree it’s sometimes a bit of a gray area. IMO, the floor is a big determining factor. Concrete = basement, dirt = crawl space. Other than people arguing terminology I don’t know that it really matters. It’s not as if someone isn’t going to know what one is talking about.
You can even take a it a step further and argue about what constitutes a basement. IIRC, there is/was some definition in the code book about a certain % of the walls being a certain # of feet below grade…. otherwise it’s just slab construction.
I have settled on calling it a basement if I can stand up in it and a crawlspace if I have to crawl. I may not be correct, but they know what I’m talking about.
I always went by preponderance of the evidence; if it was used like a basement then it was a basement. I just wondered if there was an official cut off. If it’s this short or this tall then it is exactly as such or not. I guess it’s a gray area–period. Just wondered what you guys thought. Thanks.
Sounds like a basement to me, especially considering the height difference from the actual crawlspace to the basement and the function it serves housing the furnace, breaker box and water tank.
The correct word for a hand-dug low “basement” is CELLAR. Typical attributes of cellars are low headroom, often have stone or brick walls and sometimes dirt floors. They were used to place the foundation walls and piers below the frost line and may contain early furnaces, coal chutes and or chimney cleanouts. Not suitable as a habitable space.
A crawlspace must be navigated on your knees. Hence the name crawlspace!
Many Baltimore rowhomes have cellars that were hand dug before the widespread use of excavating equipment.
I call them all either a basement or a crawlspace for report purposes. The important thing is that your client knows what you’re talking about.
A basement is an area that you can stand up and walk, even though you might not be standing straight up, you’re still standing and walking through the area.
A crawlspace is an area that you can’t physically stand up in and requires one to navigate it on their knees.
IMO cellar is the proper term for an area that you can stand in but that has low head room and a dirt floor.
A basement is a story of a building that is partially or fully below grade and is intended to be entered and occupied in a standing position.
Cellar
A cellar is a below‑grade space that is not intended for habitation, typically with reduced headroom, and historically used for storage, mechanical equipment, or foundation access.
Crawlspace
A crawlspace is a shallow, unfinished, below‑floor space that provides access to building systems but is not intended for human occupancy and cannot be navigated in a standing position.
i had a crawlspace that had a 5ft clearance and was fully encapsulated with 1” foam covering the vapor barrier for most of the thing. it was still a crawlspace so that definition doesn’t work all the time. from the desciption the op gave i would call it a cellar.
I know that when we were expanding our home in 2012, we added a basement. The Architect corrected us and said “it’s a crawlspace”. A basement has to be finished and gets a different set of rules.
We still called it the basement, but I could walk in it because I wanted the bottom of the 1st floor joists to be 6’4” so I would walk in the place without bashing my head.
The first heavy rain of that year, December I believe, this happened. Turns out we lived on the ancient stream bed coming down the mountain and the mountain behind our home drained onto our lot. Even if it didn’t appear above ground, the water table rose to about 1 ft from the surface. I ended up putting in a massive storm drain at the back of the property to collect as much surface water as possible and 3 pumps in the sump pit. One small one(surface sucker) for incidental, one 3/4 hp main pump and another 3/4 pump sitting above it in the hole. The little one would run for about two weeks 24/7, the big one would run once a minute for a week. I did the math and came up with about 100,000-150,000 gallons pumped every big rain. That’s sorta a lot of water. I fixed the flooded basement(ahem, crawlspace) though.
I guess that depends on where you’re getting the definition of a basement. Although the NEC does not define a basement they do have specific rules for unfinished basements. So for the application of the electrcial code a basement does not have to be finished to meet the definition. I would defer to the adopted building code for the definitions of basments and crawl spaces. I agree with you calling it a basement.
That must be an Iowa thing. In Minnesota, (and most other states I have lived / worked in), we consider those “Walkout Basements”!
FYI… we don’t give a rats patootie what you ‘walk on’, it’s all about what foundation system holds the structure up!
