For all those who were asking:Why Don't More Homes in Oklahoma Have Basements?

[dixiegrrrrl]

In a region that sees more than its share of tornadoes, it also prompts a question: Why aren't more homes here built with basements? After all, Oklahoma City and its surrounding communities are part of the Plains region known as "Tornado Alley" for the frequency with which twisters strike here.

The answer is largely due to three reasons: area building codes, the amount of water in the soil here, and the generally high level of the water table, according to reporting done back in 2011 by MSNBC.

As one commenter described it on the Prepared Society message boards, Oklahoma is a land of "clay soil and high water table."

http://www.wunderground.com/news/why-dont-oklahoma-homes-have-basements-20130521

clay soil and high water table is also found in other tornado target states.

[Brickbat]

1. It's like people think that those who live in Tornado Alley have never considered these things.

They build for the averages there, not the extremes. Just like many other places. There's a law of diminishing returns at some point. You can't build against every possibility, or even every eventuality. That school, for example, would have withstood a lot of smaller, weaker tornadoes -- which, believe me, are plenty strong.

[Kolesar]

6. Yes, they can build to resist normal tornadoes with hurricane straps and such

But there is little point designing for a tornado that only occurs about once per year anywhere in the United States.

[Eddie Haskell]

2. So what?

Waterproofing may add some cost; but judging from what I've seen, it's worth it.

[NYC_SKP]

4. It's not just waterproofing...

A high enough water table will float a basement like a boat, with the house on top.

[Squinch]

11. But there was that one guy who had what looked like about a 6 foot square little space with

two benches in it built underground. His whole family and a few dogs got down there while the hurricane passed right over them. They're all fine. So it doesn't need to be a basement. It can be a small holding area.

[NYC_SKP]

13. These are the option, reinforced bunkers, don't even need to be below grade.

[Bandit]

15. You mean something like a "Storm Cellar"

Fairly common in most Tornado Alley locations...

[Squinch]

17. But am I right in thinking there were very few in this area? The news reporter was

acting as if this guy's was a rarity.

[notadmblnd]

12. the water table where I live is 3 ft along with clay soil. We have a basement

we are on top of a hill. The neighbors next door and down the hill have a basement too. They also have a sump pump. We live in Michigan and I've never seen a basement float away. My parents also live right on a lake. A tornado touched down in their back yard a couple of years back and took out 5 trees. Their basement withstood it all.

I'm not making a judgment, I'm just saying a high water table does not rule out having a basement.

[NYC_SKP]

18. I'll agree that high water table doesn't preclude basements, especially partial basements.

But the floating bathtub effect is real.

In this diary is a description of how in new construction the contractors flooded the basement before building the superstructure to prevent it's rising due to water table.

http://www.longmoorlodge.co.uk/12803.html

~~~

[notadmblnd]

20. up here we put drainage ditches in.

We dig down to the foundation add pea gravel then run (some people call it drain tile) about a 4 inch flexable pipe in a direction away from the house, then bury it all. When it rains all the water is carried away rom the foundation o the house. Having a basement will add 5 or 6k to the cost of a house but imo, it is money well spent.

[NYC_SKP]

21. We call them French drains, but they work more for rain water than for water table.

If you're trying to divert water table water, the destination point for the pipe would, in most cases, be some considerable distance from your property.

[notadmblnd]

22. ours extended probably 10 ft past the house out toward the back yard.

the sump pump is for the water table water.

[Kolesar]

3. The acidic clay soil on my wet wet lot dissolved the calcium in our basement's mortar and blocks

... and caused vertical cracks right through the blocks. The developer built a street that made a dike that blocked the natural waterflow out of the area. Hence, my lot was wet a lot and there was nowhere to drain the roof drains or patio. The house next door had no basement, and that was a much better choice.

I sold the house and disclosed that I occasionally saw water ponding on the floor.

[dixiegrrrrl]

8. Some states, like mine, have a NO disclosure law.

The law about selling a house here:
"as is, where is" and seller does not have to disclose anything.

The house next door has a partial basement, being a split level, and twice in 8 years water has flowed into the basement after
heavy rains.

There are so many good reasons people cannot build basements, which vociferous critical posters do not stop to think about.

There are also a LOT of tornado shelters all over tornado alley, but no press covers that.

[Kolesar]

9. Despite that, I still made a profit on my house when I sold it ten years ago

...and moved in with a strident woman. It's worked out well on all accounts

[NYC_SKP]

5. Reinforced concrete block safe closets are an option. nt

[Chan790]

7. That yields a follow-up...

Knowing this is a problem, doesn't this create a necessity for building codes that stress more tornado-resistant buildings?

I mean it wouldn't have made a difference yesterday in OK, that thing was killer...but usually they show the devastation and it's people living in mobile-homes and wood-framed structures.

I'd think minimally they could reduce some of this by making people build with steel-frame or bricks or cast-concrete...yes, the building cost is higher but the climate-control costs would be lower, the insurance costs would be substantially-lower, the loss of property and loss of life would be so much lower (and can you really put a price on those?) as to offset increased cost.

Minimally, this is a move that needs be made in public buildings...if for no other reason than to exponentially-increase the number of safe structures for people living in unsafe structures.

[Squinch]

16. I think we also need to become prepared for more of these "once in a lifetime"

events. My own home had two "once in a lifetime" floods in 5 years. I've been in the area all my life and there were never any floods before. It's the fact of climate change.

I hope their new building codes assume these storms will be a distinct possibility on the future.

[Isoldeblue]

10. What would prevent communtiy tunnel bunkers,

Last edited Tue May 21, 2013, 05:48 PM - Edit history (1)

being built throughout the area? If there were a few basic, underground tunnels for the people and for school children to get shelter from, when there is sufficient time to get to? I'd think that many lives could have been saved with doing more than was available.

I'm not an engineer, but if extremely tall skyscrapers can be built, why can't tunneled bunkers be built, large enough to hold a hundred or so people, scattered throughout the area of high odds for killer tornadoes. Tunnels are built under rivers and bays, so the water table, shouldn't be a factor.

Too many children were killed, injured and terrified, scarring them forever. I can't help but not have a problem with why there wasn't a higher priority to protect the children.

[jwirr]

14. Went through a big tornado years ago and it turned out that if we had gone to the basement we would

have drowned. Put there is a way. Concrete shelters can be built above ground and reinforced by steel. It is very similair to the old idea of fall out shelters. How ever I am not sure this would work with these monster storms.

[LeftInTX]

19. Lots of people have tornado shelters

They are relatively cost effective and don't require the same maintenance as basements.

Basements up north are not without a lot of work. My grandparents in Wisconsin lived in a house constructed in around 1900. That basement was the most gawd awful place. It was full of mold and stunk to high heaven. I was scared to go down there. When I was in college I lived in an old house and the basement was a creepy dirt floor thing which was a great critter habitat.

Years later, my parents' house in Wisconsin had waterproofing in the basement which is pretty much required for all modern basements everywhere.

They also built vacation home way up in northern Wisconsin, which only has a crawlspace and no finished basement. If there's a tornado they can go into the crawlspace. They didn't want a basement due to the hassles and relatively low water table along the lake shore.

I believe storm cellars are traditionally popular in the south because they were often used to store produce prior to refrigeration. There are some old abandoned homesteads near me with detached root cellars.

[northoftheborder]

23. Most if not all old houses in rural Texas had cellars (partially underground,.....

.....partially taking up part of crawl space under house). Used to store things, and as a place of shelter. My grandparents had a cellar out from the house, partially underground, with a round mound of dirt on top, with a slanted door in the side. I used to love running up and down the little "mountain" and remember being carried out in the middle of the night, with the wind screeching and blowing clouds fast across the sky, to the storm cellar. No weather forecasters in those days.....so frequent visits to cellars at the slightest hint of storms, especially tornadoes.

[FreeJoe]

24. Doesn't match my experience

I lived in Oklahoma about a decade ago. We built a custom house there. I had a long talk with the architect/builder about basements, foundations, etc. He said that building underground level was much more expensive than building above ground, so you didn't do it unless you needed to do it. You needed to put your foundation below the frost line. In Oklahoma City, that was about 1.5 feet, so your foundation needed to be dug about 24-30" deep. If you were someplace where the winters were colder, you might need to go deeper. Once you go deep enough, you are already paying the cost of a basement, so you might as well make one. In OK, that was not the case. We were on a hill and had a well about 100 feet deep, so the water table was definitely not the issue.

We talked a lot about storm shelters. I looked at three options. We could build an above ground shelter/safe room for about $7,000. We could put in a below ground shelter for $4,500. We could just reinforce the stairwell and use it a small shelter. The safe room would be good for almost all tornadoes, but not a direct hit from the most severe. The below ground shelter would withstand anything from mother nature. The stairwell would handle low to mid-strength tornadoes.

I played with the numbers for a while (How many people like in Oklahoma? How many people die each year from tornadoes? How likely would we be to be home when one hit? How many people have shelters?). What I concluded was that the reinforcing the stairs made the most economic sense. The extra cost of the other options wasn't worth it for the extra safety level because the really powerful storms were so rare.

I know, that sounds stupid at first. What price would you put on your life and your family's life? The reality is that you make these sorts of decisions all the time. No one has infinite money and so you make trade-offs. I could have spent that extra money on an indoor sprinkler system for my house (a lot more people die from fires than tornadoes, even in Oklahoma). I could have spent it on safer vehicles (far more people in Oklahoma die in car accidents).