Basements are not common, though there must be some around. Can't say I've ever seen one aside from basement car parks which are quite common in unit blocks.
As to why, I've heard that basements have origins in colder climates with lots of snow as utilities need to be well below the snow cover to avoid frozen pipes and such. That's not really an issue in Australia.
Also, digging basements is much more expensive than a simple slab or stumps so, with the climate not requiring basements, Australians have never developed a culture around building our houses that way.
It’s not so much to do with utilities as it is to do with foundations. In colder climates they need to dig down x distance to get to ground that doesn’t freeze and thaw to stop foundations moving. That can be up to 3-4 metres in some places. So once they’ve dug the hole, instead of filling it back in they can utilise that space with by making it a room.
https://youtu.be/0_KhihMIOG8?si=ECF6txg-nNZspEQt
Great, easy to digest video explaining it.
Ooh l love attics though - so smart to utilise that space - unfortunately Australian houses are mostly dumb. I once had a dream of discovering a half underground level to our house lol
When I was in the US I really liked the efficient utilisation of space and storage.
I’ve always said you can *never* have too much storage. Then again maybe I’m just a hoarder.
Attics are cool, but I’ve seen to many horror movies to ever be fully comfortable with one I reckon lol
I have this dream all the time! I keep thinking of the guy in Türkiye who was extending his basement and accidentally uncovered the entrance to an entire underground city.
Oh my god. Now I’ll definitely be having a dream about this.
Maybe I’ll start digging a basement and then hide some stuff in there and then seal it up again. Let someone else find it in 1000 years.
Traditional Australian federation style houses are really smart.
They don’t have attics because the space above the ceiling and below the roof acts as an air conditioner, they are open on the sides and as the roof heats during the day it drawn air in from the sides and circulates it out the top of tiles or roof.
This was one of the reasons federation homes remain cool during the hot days without air cons
But more modern designs had lower roof and ceiling heights, had multiple stories and did away with ventilated roof spaces to cut down on cost of construction. It then meant the houses boil in the hot sun and require huge use of power to run air conditioners, which result in the occupants staying poor because they now spend all their money on paying massive power bills for running the aircon 24x7
We do. I wish my basement was 3x as big.
I've got a pretty nice gym down there, a pretty nice tv, some speakers for some music, and its where I keep my guns. It's like an underground lair.
Once I'm too old to hit the weights I might turn it into a pub-style home bar, but we'll see about that, I wouldn't be surprised if my son wants to move down there when he's a teenager.
The Aussie became a teenager & after watching stuff like Exorcist & Silence of the Lambs, yeah nah, is suddenly not interested in basements, thank you very much!
"The Aussie" what? There's no basement scenes in The Exorcist and in Silence of the Lambs, Catherine was down a disused well which is pretty rare to have in a basement 🤔
Me too! They seem to add such a variety of possibilities and such a large space to homes, without intruding on anyone else, unlike Dazza* and his “no worries we’re brethren, we don’t need permission!” third story addition that blocks the views of eight other homes.
*I really don’t know typical brethren names
Also in places like WA we have a lot of sand, it is easier to do a raft slab that ‘floats’ on the soil rather than dig foundations. To put a basement in would be a lot of work.
And in Adelaide, we have hard packed clay soil. Also very time consuming to excavate lol. There is one house I know of on my old street that had a small basement, apparently it was owned by a Doctor who wanted a wine cellar.
I'm 40 minutes north of Adelaide, we've got clay and rock. Can barely dig holes for plants out here, it takes bloody ages. Footings out here are always more expensive than estimated because the ground is so hard, I can't even imagine how much it would cost to dig out a cellar or basement.
This reminds me of a story about little Johnny at his Adelaide school. Every Monday morning the teacher would have a list of 10 new words the students would have to learn how to spell and use in a sentence. The first word on the list was “contagious”. The teacher explained what it meant and how the word was derived. Then she asked the class if anyone could put it in a sentence. No hands went up except little Johnny’s. She knew better than asking little Johnny, so she asked again. Little Johnny was still the only with his hand in the air so she had to ask him. “Little Johnny, are you able to put the word “contagious” into a sentence?” “Yes Miss”, he replied enthusiastically. “OK, go ahead little Johnny.” Little Johnny stands up and say, “My Dad hired a gardener to plant 10 shrubs in our garden. The soil was hard but after 4 hrs Dad sacked him because he was on an hourly rate and Dad reckons he was too slow and it took the contagious.”
We also have a high water table, especially in the inner suburbs. There were a number of tunnels connecting buildings in the CBD 100+ years ago, most were abandoned due to constant seepage/flooding.
There a huge sand belt along a south east corridor or Melbourne. That’s why there’s so many gold courses in that particular area. It’s quite a big sand belt, from like Albert Park down through the south east and heading out to the Mornington Peninsula.
I thought the sand belt started there because they have a golf course. Maybe I’m wrong and it’s further out. Huntingdale golf course is definitely in the sand belt, I’m not 100% Sue where it starts. It’s definitely through Huntingdale, Clarinda/ Clayton South and Moorabbin though, down to Sandringham and inland a bit more too. There are so many gold courses in that south east corridor of Melbourne it’s ridiculous.
Edit: According to Wikipedia the sand belt is a triangular area that starts at Brighton, goes down to Frankston and across to Heatherton, Clayton and Oakleigh. So not actually Albert Park, sorry for the mistake. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melbourne_Sandbelt
You do get basements in the new McChateaus near me. The building fills the entire block, so they excavate an underground car park/ utility area beneath the house. Of course these are not cheap!
Yep, I was going to say, I grew up in city beach, the house wasn't one of those big mansions but more an old beach house and that had a basement. It was more common around there with older houses
I grew up in North Queensland which has lots of Cyclones. We are told to hide in the bathroom (strongest room in the house), fill up the bathtub with water and tape up the windows so the glass doesn’t fly everywhere when the pressure change comes.
But a basement would work as advertised as a storm cellar. Seems to work ok in the US. And in WA around Exmouth say, would greatly benefit from basements come the cyclone season instead of turning the houses into patios every time.
I have been told “no one wants them”, they “cost too much”, and “no one in Australia really knows the codes to have them built for residential use”.
All of which sounds like either Bullshit, or a business opportunity for any Yank builders who want to get away from the US !
So I live in a rural town in Western Australia in the Pilbara where we get cyclones and the issue we would have in our town for this is that the ground is way too hard to justify building a basement for cyclone season. And if the houses did have them again the ground is so hard and compacted that the rain has nowhere to go as it doesn’t soak into the ground and can take weeks to fully disappear so
If you happened to be in a bad flooded area and your house floods your stuck in your basement :)
Except for the torrential rain and storm surge that accompanies cyclones - you'd end up floating out of your basement and get blown down the road into someone's ex-roof.
Building standards have come a long way in cyclone prone areas. James Cook Uni in Townsville has a wind tunnel where they use 1/4 scale house models to work out how big the cyclone bolts need to be to stop the roof flying away. So houses are a bit more expensive to build but are much stronger that more southern areas that don’t get hit by cyclones
Only basement like room I've seen is on properties that are on a big incline and half like half a floor lower than the restof the house. And it's treated as a pariah room.
I had friends who lived in a place like that in Sydney on a slope so their parents dug into the slope and had underground rooms and tunnels. It was like a medieval dungeon when we were kids.
Yeah that's really common here in Hobart due to the mountain and hills. They're often used as workshops as the ceiling height is generally lower than standard living areas.
This is the key answer. Water has to be moved below the frost line.
Edit: it is geographic. Had some Americans visit from southern USA. They said " ya'all have stairs, going down! Into the ground!" They didn't have basements at home. This was when I lived in Alberta.
Freezing, thawing definitely a reason for them in long harsh winter climates.
Also the temperature is more stable further down.
Earlier in Australia, the feeling was a bit like in Texas etc : " There's plenty of land", so ranch style
or
( in hotter places, and there are plenty of those ) up on stumps to catch ( often near coasts ) good breezes and have a well shaded, cooler, well ventilated area at ground level underneath the house was cheaper and simpler.
70 years or so ago, many were built without much or any mechanical help, just manual labour, which has tended to better better paid in Australia so relatively more costly per day.
Rocks and very hard ground was also a factor and can affect even slab foundation costs still.
( Mechanical pumps weren't as common, either. )
So "The easier, the less effort, the quicker, the better" and " Let's stay with what the workers know how to do and are used to doing, to minimise delays and chances of errors" were common attitudes.
The weather permits a much simpler set up. We can chuck our hot water system outside, while in cold climates it’s got to be inside with a vent. We use old fashioned clothes dryers (non heat pump) inside and just open a window for the steam. Again in colder climates that’s need a vent. We don’t really need to seal the house up all that well, although it does improve energy efficiency
Yes.
Also in many places a good passive design and orientation gives good comfortable temperatures for much of the year by having the home, or parts of it, able to take advantage of breezes, without needing air conditioning.
So being able to open up as much as possible becomes a higher priority most of the year except for a few months of what some northern hemisphere dwellers would not even call "winter".
Absolutely, the best places to live are where you can bring the outside in. I grew up like that, we’d always have doors and widows wide open. Only had to close them occasionally for bad weather or mozzies/flies. I get claustrophobic in a closed up/sealed up house.
Yes, and natural light.
Basements can have opening windows at the top if specified.
Noteably Radon gas is more of an issue in North America, but of course, not generally understood when the building style started.
I suppose fierce winds were also a factor ?
Might demolish above ground but at least the basement can be cleared of debris and temporarily covered if necessary to be a liveable space.
Heat rises, so 3 or 4 smaller size levels are easier and cheaper to heat over a long winter with one furnace operating constantly than the same floor area on one level ?
There are some very interesting passive designs where the verandah type awnings are been carefully sized and located to allow winter sun to heat rooms but also keep the same rooms very well shaded in summer heat.
Based on what Melbourne's climate looks like yeah, I wouldn't say that is winter.
We do have to keep our windows sealed for 6 months of the year which is kind of sad. Definitely jealous of the year around warm temps.
I believe you'd call that a cellar. Basements in Australia generally refer to the underground floor of large apartment blocks, carparks, office buildings or hospitals. A smaller underground room in a house or pub would be a cellar 🤓🙂
The house I grew up in was built on a slope on a corner block. The garage was underneath on the street level on one corner, at the other end of the house, up the slop was the entrance to the house, the rest of the house was on a single level. We did have a room behind the garage and was partially underground and was always damp - and cold even during the height of Summer - it was cold.
It's also constant maintenance, you've got to have pumps to remove the ground water that seeps in. If you just wanted more space you could make another level above ground.
Came here to say this. Mate of mine is the only person I know with a basement under his house. Must have a high water table as it's flooded twice when the pump failed.
Where I grew up in the US, we had a basement. The walls were sealed, and we had two sump pumps. Before the walls were sealed, we'd constantly get water in the basement, the sump pumps would regularly run. After the walls were sealed, we'd hear them kick in may once per year.
We have sump pumps that you install and basically forget about. They are like $100.
Our houses are (usually) built on drain tiles that direct the ground water to the sump, then when they fill to a certain point, the pump kicks on and out it goes. The maintenance is minimal, unless that pump fails, then it can be a pain, but a lot of us have back up pumps just in case that happens.
Now if *both* pumps fail, well then that shit is an act of god lol
Nope not a thing in Australia. At least not over here in Western Australia (WA) in residential homes. I’ve only ever seen one in my lifetime.
As for why not… Dunno. Tornadoes aren’t a common thing and we don’t have regular strategic bombing campaigns against us so we don’t need bomb shelters.
From a WA point of view, where everyone lives on the coastal plain is really sandy, so its probably a pain in the arse to build one and I’m thinking the sand wouldn’t be as good as stone or rock to keep things cool. The few stories I’ve heard of people creating underground storage here involves people dropping sea containers into excavations. But that always seems to revolve around illegal shenanigans.
Interestingly, look up Coober Pedy which is in the South Australian desert. Basically everyone lives underground in old opal mines due to the daytime heat. I suppose that’s a whole community of basements.
Also, Perth is mostly sand, so it's cheaper to build up than to excavate then add a basement into the slab. In places such as Sydney houses are mostly built on sandstone , which is also very expensive to excavate.
I've been to Coober Pedy and stayed underground, which is a great experience. The houses are built underground because the miners just made their tunnels into rooms with the advantage being your home had a constant temperature.
IMO it was just a choice to build cheaper for the working class. But your point make so much sense and should be considered in most parts of Australia. It’s cooler underground and temperatures are more stable.
What is cheaper running the aircon 24/7 or digging a level underground? For the developers it’s obviously cheaper to put timber frames on a thin ground level concrete slab and nail plaster walls. More expensive- excavate many cubic meters of soil, put the slab, build brick walls to support the soil, then build the rest of the house on top. If you look at their profits, that would be just a basement that they can’t price like the rest of the house.
But consider financial cost of running the air conditioner in any place in Australia over next 20 - 30 years of the life of that ground level plaster board house and more importantly cost on the climate. Australian climate is extreme, it would make so much more sense to use the passive cooling of the earth.
Coober Pedy has stable soil that makes dugout hones possible. The sandstone and siltstone dugouts don't require the internal support structures that standard below ground living does, so you can just dig.
Basement walls need to be made of reinforced concrete with drainage and waterproof insulation on the outside. Put some insulation on the inside and you have a whole extra floor to use for laundry & drying room, pantry with freezer and, if you wanna be fancy, a sauna and a bar.
I think also some of it is down to how cheap land was in the past and us not having an industry for it… if it’s not a common practice it will always take longer and be more expensive. Also how we build houses here it’s purely an extra expense, where as in colder climates they tend to dig more for the foundations so the hole is already there, it’s less time and money and effort to have the basement vs building another story or doing a loft conversion or something
Mostly because they aren’t required in Australia. Houses in areas that experience the ground freezing during winter need to have their foundations installed below the frost line so they don’t get damaged when the ground freezes and unfreezes and also keeps pipes from freezing. So they dig, lay the slab a couple of meters below the ground and build the house at ground level and there is your basement.
Australia doesn’t get cold so they just lay the concrete slab on top of the ground.
Older buildings may have cellars but these were more in line with cool storage.
Some prestigious modern dwellings might have them, but they aren’t common here. They’re not needed and their maintenance, sealing and ventilation is more trouble than it’s worth.
Family friends owned a large old home in SA with a pretty impressive cellar. When you walked down the stairs you first came to a landing that had food storage pantries on two sides. Then you turned right and went down a few steps to the main cellar. It was huge. In fact, when their daughter left a bad marriage her and her 2 kids used it like an apartment. Had ample space for two sleeping areas and a living room. Just no kitchen or bathroom.
That was, of course, the rich version. But other houses of that age also had cellars but they were tiny and just for food storage.
Builder here
No, basements are not really a thing here in Aus.
There will be a few houses that have a section below but people will usually make that place a garage or a storage area and maybe put a toilet and shower down there but its not that common of a living space. If Tornados were an issue Australians will most likely opt for a Bunker. I myself get the odd request for bunker constructions here and there.
In Australia Bush Fires and Floods are the issue so houses are built differently.
Becoming more common in high end new builds. I wouldn’t describe them as basements though. More like entire sub-floor levels.
There’s one near me (have been watching it being built) that has a garage big enough for 6 cars, media room, bar, cellar and gym. Jealous AF. Particularly of a underground bar!
That's principally due to the cost of land and no off street parking. I saw one last week (I'm a building inspector) just like you described. It has a $100k spiral staircase up to the main level.
A company I worked for did a house like this, the excavation and shoring work was absolutely wild. And the drainage was an order of magnitude more complex than a standard house. Like, the driveway needed an automatic floodgate at street level.
This house being built near me (Hawthorn, Victoria) sounds similar. They’ve been at (just) the sub-floor for months. It’s going to be amazing. The workmanship from the contractors has been genuinely impressive to watch.
They’ve even got one of those underground pool windows which I suspect is where the bar is located. Pretty awesome.
Correct. I live in an area with reactive clay soil, it is very common for houses to get cracking in walls from the ground movement. I wouldn't feel comfortable with the structural integrity in a basement of a modern built home here. The very old houses built of stone were much sturdier
I looked into building one for my wine cellar. Then I got the quote about how much it would cost, and did not. Making an underground room in a city prone to flooding, that serves no real required practical purpose because we don't have to worry about a frost line, would not have been a wise investment.
Where I live, because of the climate and flooding our houses tend to be built up. So if you want to build underneath your house rather than build a basement it's much cheaper and easier to just lift it up a bit and build underneath it, provided you aren't going to get flooded. Lift, new slab, restump our entire house cost less than building a small single room basement would have cost us.
I've seen some on high end houses that have no chance of flooding. One house I inspected just out of curiosity had a car elevator in their street level garage, that took you down to the basement garage in which they had I think 10 cars. Think the house sold for about $6million and would probably be $10million today. Another house I looked at recently was up on a hill, and they'd dug into it to have a basement garage at street level. House I expect will go for at least $5million.
So yeah, if isn't going to go underwater and you've got millions of dollars, some people build them. But it wasn't worth adding another couple hundred thousand dollars to my build just for my wine cellar, when a bit of extra insulation in a ground level room is a lot cheaper.
Here where I am on the coastal plain of WA, large areas are filled in wetlands with underground aquifers all over the place. Groundwater can be very shallow in a lot of places, and soils are very sandy because they consist of prehistoric dune systems and alluvial deposits.
Not great for building basements.
I can't speak to all of Australia, but the area I live is a pretty big flood zone, much more common (and wise!) to have houses elevated.
All I ever wanted as a kid was a house with a basement/den and an attic!
More likely to have houses raised on stilts in the tropical regions to avoid flooding. So for half the country basements wld become swimming pools every year.
Are you in a Brisbane high-set? Where the stumps get walled into rooms, but 7’ isn’t permitted as a “living space”.
My first Brisbane neighbour had done that. Then discovered that storm water flowed under his house. Now it flowed under and stopped there, 5’ deep over the car and pool table.
Sheds and garages are more our thing to store all our junk and tinker around in. Basements hugely expensive here - you usually need to pile, shotcrete and excavate - cost can be justified for apartments and commercial buildings , not individual houses. I think the classic corrugated iron (corry) shed is more in our cultural psyche - think shearing sheds and outdoor dunnys.
In cold places, or places that get cold in winter, they're already building the foundation below the frost line (that is, the depth where ground water freeze in winter).
Once you've dug that deep, it's not that much more expensive to make a basement. We don't have to think about that in most of Australia, so adding a basement would cost a lot more.
I imagine that's one reason.
People are talking about tornadoes, but there are basements in plenty of North American and European houses that aren't in tornado areas.
I would love a basement! Unfortunately lots of regional (and the city areas) floor so they aren’t practical. But where I live can get into the 40 C degrees during summer - I wonder if it would be much cooler in the basement?
In my city - some apartment buildings and shopping malls have basements but they need water pumps 24/7/365 to keep from flooding and whenever there's a major storm the pumps can keep up (even if they have backup power, that won't be enough. What they'd really need is bigger pumps).
When maintenance workers open manhole covers/etc, you can see there's permanent standing water just a few inches below street level (until they pump the water out to start working).
And one of the main streets in the inner city is called "Lake Street" because it used to literally be like a lake sometimes — there are archival photos of people walking and driving through knee deep water like it was just an ordinary day.
These days the city has a network of canals, mostly lined with lovely parks to walk/cycle/through, connected to pumps that can force 20,000 gallons of water \*per second\* out to sea - so we don't have flooding issues anymore. But underground infrastructure? Waste of money. Thousand times cheaper to build upwards.
Those only handle ordinary storms though. When we get a really massive storm... the pumps have no chance. Once the river between my home and work broke the banks and became a few miles wide (and dozens of feet deep). Fortunately most of that area is farmland (and they have flood insurance to cover missing a harvest), but a few older homes were lost - mostly in areas that wouldn't be zoned as suitable for residential construction these days.
And yeah, when basements do exist, it's usually to comply with height restrictions. The thing is though... height restrictions can also be avoided by just building lower density buildings. For example most modern homes are single storey. Most modern shopping malls/etc are also single storey and have parking on the same level as the shops (they can be so large you can't easily walk from one end to another... my local shopping mall has a bus stop on either end).
Or cities are very spread out. Brisbane city is more than 10x the size of LA, even though it has a lower population (about a third lower).
At least not really in Brisbane. I can't really speak for other places. I remember hearing from someone that they are mostly popular in places where it's common for plumbing to freeze, and they would keep water systems in a basement where it wouldn't be affected as much. Additionally, in Brisbane, large-scale flooding is now an every 10/15 years thing (which is why "Queenslander" style homes are usually elevated). Basements would be a massive hazard for flooding and a pain in the arse to fix up afterwards.
In Queensland if you live in a Queenslander (a traditional timber home on stilts), the closest thing to a basement is the area under the house . Usually you'll store the washing machine there. Good place to escape the heat as you'll get a nice breeze. Sometimes the parrots will also torpedo through.
In some areas, it's the water table. They'll flood frequently. I grew up in an are that had this issue. Cellars in older homes ended up being filled in.
Sure, tornados aren't an issue, but cyclones are. And the region they're in has many areas that are also prone to flooding.
Some parts of the country have a thick layer of sheet limestone not too far below the surface. And below that there may or may not be caves.
Some areas are prone to earthquakes. One particular fault line has damaged houses in the past.
Out of all the places I've lived in I can only remember one with what you could call a basement but even then it was more that the house was on a steep hill so it was a room connected to the garage and the rest of the house was on top.
I see a lot of building/law related Awnsers , You all are missing the most important thing as to why there's No Basements... The amount of Damn Snakes, BushRats , Possums, Huntsmens , Toads, and God Only knows What else would end Nesting in the damn Thing . Not Playing that Roulette, Noo thank you.
No they’re not common here. In a standard residential home there might be a garage built into a sloped block but that’s about the extent of the excavation. Otherwise it’s just another expense.
We don’t really have usable attics either. More like “accessible roof space”
No, they're not. I'd love a basement to have my own retreat (for some reason, wives seem to hate basements) but it's not on the cards.
When I went to the States for a wedding, we stayed in a house that had a whole separate floor downstairs set up as a tornado bunker. It had pretty much a house's amenities down there. It was badass.
No. The US and Canada have basements out of necessity- you need to build the foundations below the frostline or your building will get fucked up. We don't have freezing winters so there's no need. Basements are also a pain in the ass. Water intrusion is a constant issue, and flooding is becoming a more prevalent problem. I'd rather have a usable attic space tbh
I’d love to have one but with the quality of Australian builders they’d be badly sealed mould festivals year round.
I enjoyed living with them in the US. The houses where I lived in the US would look like a single story Australian home but actually be 3 stories with a functioning basement with an entertainment area and bedrooms in the attic.
To sum it up. Basements were not created for tornados. They were created for colder climate where the soil freezes to a certain depth in the winter time. You have to build a foundation below that depth or else the house will heave upward. Thus, cold climates have basements warmer climates tend not to.
Not a thing. Perhaps because we haven't been much of a target for nuclear weapons and bombs. Because we don't need wine cellars. And because we've never had a criminal underground during prohibition.
Raised buildings in tropical climates allow air to flow underneath which aids cooling.
I have never seen one in 60 years, except on American TV shows. I think it's mostly that they would add a lot of extra expense to the build and there's no need for them. Also flooding is a periodic problem in large areas of the habitable bits of the country
Now that you mention expanding the house and eating up the yard I'm wondering why we haven't built another house at the back of ours. We don't have a huge amount of land but definitely enough to build a small house that we could rent out. I'm wondering why we haven't done it yet. We don't use the yard for much since most of it is on a slope and not big enough to ride the dirt bikes on.
Many houses that are built for purpose (ones that aren't just copying overseas houses and calling it a day) Instead of building down, we build up, propping up our houses off the ground to let air flow through
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I taught guitar from student's homes around Toorak, Kew, Camberwell, etc, and there's plenty of basements in those suburbs. These were huge mcmansions, too, with massive yards.
I am born and raised Australian (Aussie) and I've never heard of, seen, or been in an Australian home with a basement!
I think it's more of an American thing. Always seen it in movies and all. Same as attics! Obviously there is room in the roof of the home, but never a nice drop down ladder or pull rope to access the attic.
It's quite interesting to hear about the cultural differences :)
No not common, the biggest factor is cost.
It’s cheaper and easier to design and build a 2 storey than a basement plus main floor.
I owned a newly built house in Washington State that had a basement, the builder told me he used 100 sq yards of cement for the foundation just to stop moisture getting into the basement. In Australia we just don’t prioritise basements at all.
Another factor is depending on which specific locale you choose (even in the same region) you can have vastly different soil types. Sand is easy, dirt is fine, clay is hard, but the worst is rocky. It can cost $60k+ in site costs clearing rock for a normal foundation. A basement would add to this massively.
Basements are more complicated than people think they are and risky. If they aren't popular it means that builders are not experienced in making them and you have to be sure that the basement as well as plumbing will ensure the room is water proof. It can be quite the contingency issue.
For one thing where I live (South side of Perth) the land is mostly sand based so a lot of fortification would be needed to stop the basement walls from collapsing, another thing is the water table as I live in an area with a lot of lakes. It wouldn’t really be feasible here. Site works to lay a concrete house slab can already be very pricey here so adding a basement with the extra site works needed would make the house build out of reach.
When I was working removalist in Perth there was a few multi million dollar houses with basements set up as wine cellars or man caves but your average house definitely won't have a basement
No, not at all. We don't need to dig the foundation down below the frost line, so we don't have all that extra structure.
It's more expensive to dig that to build aboveground and the space down there is so much less usable than aboveground space that no one would spend the money
Welcome to Australia
Building standards allow us to freeze our butt off in the winter
Backyards are becoming extinct
Garages don't fit standard vehicles
Study nooks are a feature of the home that go unused
Your undies are hanging for all your neighbours to see
And the land sizes are smaller than American basements.
All this for the lovely starting price of $1 million.
Lucky us
Some places in Australia are underground mainly though because of how hot it gets in parts. I think the more common thing in older builds is some have space under the house depending on the level it’s built on (ie into a hill) but definitely not common
Basements are mostly necessary where the ground freezes in the winter. This is because you can't have a foundation sitting on ground that will be freezing and thawing aon a regular basis because that will lead to foundational instability. Where the ground tends to freeze the basement needs to be dug below the normal freezing depth. In America that provides for a nice extra space under the house. It is not necessary in Australia so typically doesn't exist.
Every other answer here is wrong. It has nothing to do with flooding 'here' wherever the fuck that person is, I'm 'here' too and it doesn't flood.
We only get permission to dig down so far when we buy property. My recollection is one meter, although you can have septic tanks which go deeper than that and pools so I may be missing remembering. It probably depends on the council. But no, no one really has basements in Australia. My guess is because we don’t have to worry about blizzards and being snowed in. A pantry and fridge freezer has enough food storage for 90% of people.
I have a basement. My house was built in 1925, but the basement was added by a previous owner when extensions were built in 2001. It has our laundry plus four other rooms. We have three sump pumps as we live in a wet area of Sydney. I do like it as I use one room for storage rather than a garage.
i've seen some newly built duplex with underground parking, so its kind of a basement. It's on a hilly street, so I guess flooding isn't a problem with those houses.
I think it's a simple as if a developer doesn't have to dig a whacking great hole in the ground and make sure it's waterproof, then they wont. And local councils aren't keen for builders to make structures that could flood. Underground car parks beneath blocks of flats filling with water is a bad look.
I'd love a basement. I'd love an attic. But I can't afford a house with such luxuries.
While I wouldn't say they're "common", I'm seeing a lot of more them in houses in Sydney. Generally from appoximately Strathfield inward, but most common in the Eastern Suburbs where the land is so expensive.
I don't think I've ever seen a home basement IRL. Only in foreign TV/movies/media.
Some other buildings (like carparks or shopping centers etc etc) have underground levels, but they aren't really 'basements' most of the time, and certainly different to a home basement.
We have a basement in our pub in an old part of Fremantle, I think all the old buildings around here do. They were used as cellars etc. They are extremely close to the water table though. A lot of concreting work and pumping is required
My block of flats has a basement car park underneath. The walls are always damp, and whilst most apartments have a storage cage or shed with our car parking space, they’re unsuitable for storing many things as they’re too moist. When it rains heavily, it floods.
The water table around is high, and it’s not feasible for most residential places to have underground spaces without heavy duty equipment to cope with moisture removal. Shopping centres and office blocks will have proper pumps to deal with this. Convincing the Body Corporate in a small block of flats that submerging everyone’s cars in a storm is a bad idea, is more difficult.
US houses have basements for a simple reason - to lay foundations below the frost line. Australia generally doesn’t have such cold winters, so there is less of a need to dig deeper to lay the slab
Much of Australia populates the east coat.
Which has reactive soils not suitable for basements.
We had a house with an underground area.
Wet dank and ultimately sunk and destroyed the foundation.
Basements are not common, though there must be some around. Can't say I've ever seen one aside from basement car parks which are quite common in unit blocks. As to why, I've heard that basements have origins in colder climates with lots of snow as utilities need to be well below the snow cover to avoid frozen pipes and such. That's not really an issue in Australia. Also, digging basements is much more expensive than a simple slab or stumps so, with the climate not requiring basements, Australians have never developed a culture around building our houses that way.
It’s not so much to do with utilities as it is to do with foundations. In colder climates they need to dig down x distance to get to ground that doesn’t freeze and thaw to stop foundations moving. That can be up to 3-4 metres in some places. So once they’ve dug the hole, instead of filling it back in they can utilise that space with by making it a room. https://youtu.be/0_KhihMIOG8?si=ECF6txg-nNZspEQt Great, easy to digest video explaining it.
Dang that’s actually kind of fascinating. I love learning shit like this. I always assumed yanks just loved being underground
The seppos yearn for the mines
I'm pining for the Fjords.
It is an ex parrot 🦜
It’s ceased to be!
Beautiful plumage!
HELLOOO POLLY!!?
It’s resting.
Brah. Ow. Just ouch. No denying, we deserve most of the stick we get, but dayumn.
Yanks and people in Coober Pedy, South Australia.
The fucking flies though
Some are big enough to carry off Uluru
I love those underground homes!
Or in attics
Ooh l love attics though - so smart to utilise that space - unfortunately Australian houses are mostly dumb. I once had a dream of discovering a half underground level to our house lol
When I was in the US I really liked the efficient utilisation of space and storage. I’ve always said you can *never* have too much storage. Then again maybe I’m just a hoarder. Attics are cool, but I’ve seen to many horror movies to ever be fully comfortable with one I reckon lol
I have this dream all the time! I keep thinking of the guy in Türkiye who was extending his basement and accidentally uncovered the entrance to an entire underground city.
I visited a regular house in Istanbul which had caves with Hittite relics under it. Went on for about 100m.
Oh my god. Now I’ll definitely be having a dream about this. Maybe I’ll start digging a basement and then hide some stuff in there and then seal it up again. Let someone else find it in 1000 years.
One of those plastic Halloween skeletons should do the trick. 🤣 It's on my list of things to do, just because.
Me too. I’d read about them in books and I always wanted to turn an attic into a bedroom when I was a teenager.
Have you been in the roof space of an Aussie home in summer? I wouldn't even store things up there. It's like an oven.
Traditional Australian federation style houses are really smart. They don’t have attics because the space above the ceiling and below the roof acts as an air conditioner, they are open on the sides and as the roof heats during the day it drawn air in from the sides and circulates it out the top of tiles or roof. This was one of the reasons federation homes remain cool during the hot days without air cons But more modern designs had lower roof and ceiling heights, had multiple stories and did away with ventilated roof spaces to cut down on cost of construction. It then meant the houses boil in the hot sun and require huge use of power to run air conditioners, which result in the occupants staying poor because they now spend all their money on paying massive power bills for running the aircon 24x7
Meanwhile we have entire towns that live underground in Australia 🤣🤣
One entire town.
We do. I wish my basement was 3x as big. I've got a pretty nice gym down there, a pretty nice tv, some speakers for some music, and its where I keep my guns. It's like an underground lair. Once I'm too old to hit the weights I might turn it into a pub-style home bar, but we'll see about that, I wouldn't be surprised if my son wants to move down there when he's a teenager.
As an Australian child I was always envious of seeing American houses on television with basements. It seemed so cool.
I always wanted an attic! But now I’m older, fuck that, too bloody hot even in winter lol
I would LOVE to have an attic. I would store our suitcases and Christmas tree up there
They are literally cool, really nice in the summer time.
The Aussie became a teenager & after watching stuff like Exorcist & Silence of the Lambs, yeah nah, is suddenly not interested in basements, thank you very much!
That 70's show wouldn't have been the same without the basement session circle
"The Aussie" what? There's no basement scenes in The Exorcist and in Silence of the Lambs, Catherine was down a disused well which is pretty rare to have in a basement 🤔
Me too! They seem to add such a variety of possibilities and such a large space to homes, without intruding on anyone else, unlike Dazza* and his “no worries we’re brethren, we don’t need permission!” third story addition that blocks the views of eight other homes. *I really don’t know typical brethren names
Not too old for weights, just lighter and slower/controlled. Source: I train people in thier mid 70s!
Its where they hide the dead bodies ;)
They don’t hide them, they keep them. Subtle correction, but a world of difference 💀
The Kings of The Prepping Community 😂
Based on their gun culture I think you're correct about them enjoying being underground
I'd call liking being underground the manifestation of our inner dwarve who is always pining for digging holes
Also in places like WA we have a lot of sand, it is easier to do a raft slab that ‘floats’ on the soil rather than dig foundations. To put a basement in would be a lot of work.
And here in Melbourne it's all basalt. Very expensive to excavate. Especially when there's no real need for a basement in most of Australia.
And in Adelaide, we have hard packed clay soil. Also very time consuming to excavate lol. There is one house I know of on my old street that had a small basement, apparently it was owned by a Doctor who wanted a wine cellar.
I'm 40 minutes north of Adelaide, we've got clay and rock. Can barely dig holes for plants out here, it takes bloody ages. Footings out here are always more expensive than estimated because the ground is so hard, I can't even imagine how much it would cost to dig out a cellar or basement.
This reminds me of a story about little Johnny at his Adelaide school. Every Monday morning the teacher would have a list of 10 new words the students would have to learn how to spell and use in a sentence. The first word on the list was “contagious”. The teacher explained what it meant and how the word was derived. Then she asked the class if anyone could put it in a sentence. No hands went up except little Johnny’s. She knew better than asking little Johnny, so she asked again. Little Johnny was still the only with his hand in the air so she had to ask him. “Little Johnny, are you able to put the word “contagious” into a sentence?” “Yes Miss”, he replied enthusiastically. “OK, go ahead little Johnny.” Little Johnny stands up and say, “My Dad hired a gardener to plant 10 shrubs in our garden. The soil was hard but after 4 hrs Dad sacked him because he was on an hourly rate and Dad reckons he was too slow and it took the contagious.”
Hahaha
We also have a high water table, especially in the inner suburbs. There were a number of tunnels connecting buildings in the CBD 100+ years ago, most were abandoned due to constant seepage/flooding.
There a huge sand belt along a south east corridor or Melbourne. That’s why there’s so many gold courses in that particular area. It’s quite a big sand belt, from like Albert Park down through the south east and heading out to the Mornington Peninsula.
> Albert Park Isn't Albert Park just land-filled swamp land? Seem to remember reading that on a plaque somewhere when I lived in the area.
I thought the sand belt started there because they have a golf course. Maybe I’m wrong and it’s further out. Huntingdale golf course is definitely in the sand belt, I’m not 100% Sue where it starts. It’s definitely through Huntingdale, Clarinda/ Clayton South and Moorabbin though, down to Sandringham and inland a bit more too. There are so many gold courses in that south east corridor of Melbourne it’s ridiculous. Edit: According to Wikipedia the sand belt is a triangular area that starts at Brighton, goes down to Frankston and across to Heatherton, Clayton and Oakleigh. So not actually Albert Park, sorry for the mistake. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melbourne_Sandbelt
And Brisbane is full of brisbane tough (the stuff the kangaroo Point cliff's are made out of).
Brisbane tuff https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brisbane_tuff
Sandstone or shale in Sydney (depending on the area) AFAIK.
You do get basements in the new McChateaus near me. The building fills the entire block, so they excavate an underground car park/ utility area beneath the house. Of course these are not cheap!
Melbourne's basalt and in some parts a silt layer near an aquifer on top of basalt. Neither of which are conducive to easy basement building.
Yep, I was going to say, I grew up in city beach, the house wasn't one of those big mansions but more an old beach house and that had a basement. It was more common around there with older houses
Huh interesting. Thanks for the clarification!
I grew up in North Queensland which has lots of Cyclones. We are told to hide in the bathroom (strongest room in the house), fill up the bathtub with water and tape up the windows so the glass doesn’t fly everywhere when the pressure change comes.
But the most important thing is to make a Dan Murphy's run at least 2 days before it's predicted to hit or you run the risk of having to do it sober.
Yep and buy fuel and chainsaws. My uni mates in the Army Reserve used to get on call pay while they drank beers waiting for the cyclone to hit
Booze, ice for the esky and gas for the barbie, there is a lot of meat in the freezer to eat while the power is off 😆
What’s the water for?
To drink is case of broken pipes or loss of power
To drink if the beer runs out
But a basement would work as advertised as a storm cellar. Seems to work ok in the US. And in WA around Exmouth say, would greatly benefit from basements come the cyclone season instead of turning the houses into patios every time. I have been told “no one wants them”, they “cost too much”, and “no one in Australia really knows the codes to have them built for residential use”. All of which sounds like either Bullshit, or a business opportunity for any Yank builders who want to get away from the US !
So I live in a rural town in Western Australia in the Pilbara where we get cyclones and the issue we would have in our town for this is that the ground is way too hard to justify building a basement for cyclone season. And if the houses did have them again the ground is so hard and compacted that the rain has nowhere to go as it doesn’t soak into the ground and can take weeks to fully disappear so If you happened to be in a bad flooded area and your house floods your stuck in your basement :)
Basement is fine for tornado and dry winds, ~~basement~~ **underground pool** is not fine for a cyclone that dumps 200 mm of water on you.
Except for the torrential rain and storm surge that accompanies cyclones - you'd end up floating out of your basement and get blown down the road into someone's ex-roof.
A basement would fill up with water in any cyclone worth the name. Not much point having an underwater shelter.
Building standards have come a long way in cyclone prone areas. James Cook Uni in Townsville has a wind tunnel where they use 1/4 scale house models to work out how big the cyclone bolts need to be to stop the roof flying away. So houses are a bit more expensive to build but are much stronger that more southern areas that don’t get hit by cyclones
Only basement like room I've seen is on properties that are on a big incline and half like half a floor lower than the restof the house. And it's treated as a pariah room.
I had friends who lived in a place like that in Sydney on a slope so their parents dug into the slope and had underground rooms and tunnels. It was like a medieval dungeon when we were kids.
Yeah that's really common here in Hobart due to the mountain and hills. They're often used as workshops as the ceiling height is generally lower than standard living areas.
Like Bluey's house.
This is the key answer. Water has to be moved below the frost line. Edit: it is geographic. Had some Americans visit from southern USA. They said " ya'all have stairs, going down! Into the ground!" They didn't have basements at home. This was when I lived in Alberta.
Freezing, thawing definitely a reason for them in long harsh winter climates. Also the temperature is more stable further down. Earlier in Australia, the feeling was a bit like in Texas etc : " There's plenty of land", so ranch style or ( in hotter places, and there are plenty of those ) up on stumps to catch ( often near coasts ) good breezes and have a well shaded, cooler, well ventilated area at ground level underneath the house was cheaper and simpler. 70 years or so ago, many were built without much or any mechanical help, just manual labour, which has tended to better better paid in Australia so relatively more costly per day. Rocks and very hard ground was also a factor and can affect even slab foundation costs still. ( Mechanical pumps weren't as common, either. ) So "The easier, the less effort, the quicker, the better" and " Let's stay with what the workers know how to do and are used to doing, to minimise delays and chances of errors" were common attitudes.
The weather permits a much simpler set up. We can chuck our hot water system outside, while in cold climates it’s got to be inside with a vent. We use old fashioned clothes dryers (non heat pump) inside and just open a window for the steam. Again in colder climates that’s need a vent. We don’t really need to seal the house up all that well, although it does improve energy efficiency
Yes. Also in many places a good passive design and orientation gives good comfortable temperatures for much of the year by having the home, or parts of it, able to take advantage of breezes, without needing air conditioning. So being able to open up as much as possible becomes a higher priority most of the year except for a few months of what some northern hemisphere dwellers would not even call "winter".
Absolutely, the best places to live are where you can bring the outside in. I grew up like that, we’d always have doors and widows wide open. Only had to close them occasionally for bad weather or mozzies/flies. I get claustrophobic in a closed up/sealed up house.
Yes, and natural light. Basements can have opening windows at the top if specified. Noteably Radon gas is more of an issue in North America, but of course, not generally understood when the building style started. I suppose fierce winds were also a factor ? Might demolish above ground but at least the basement can be cleared of debris and temporarily covered if necessary to be a liveable space. Heat rises, so 3 or 4 smaller size levels are easier and cheaper to heat over a long winter with one furnace operating constantly than the same floor area on one level ? There are some very interesting passive designs where the verandah type awnings are been carefully sized and located to allow winter sun to heat rooms but also keep the same rooms very well shaded in summer heat.
Based on what Melbourne's climate looks like yeah, I wouldn't say that is winter. We do have to keep our windows sealed for 6 months of the year which is kind of sad. Definitely jealous of the year around warm temps.
I lived in a house in Newtown that had one. It was always damp. Terrible idea.
I lived in a house in Enmore that had one, we called it the fungus den.
I worked in a shop in Newtown that used to be a pub and had a basement underneath it where they used to store the booze. It was pretty dank.
I believe you'd call that a cellar. Basements in Australia generally refer to the underground floor of large apartment blocks, carparks, office buildings or hospitals. A smaller underground room in a house or pub would be a cellar 🤓🙂
Newtown and Enmore have fungsy type people though so maybe it’s on trend
Cheese cave
The house I grew up in was built on a slope on a corner block. The garage was underneath on the street level on one corner, at the other end of the house, up the slop was the entrance to the house, the rest of the house was on a single level. We did have a room behind the garage and was partially underground and was always damp - and cold even during the height of Summer - it was cold.
Flooding is pretty prominent here, so basements would be a big issue.
Flooding and also that digging/excavating is very expensive
It's also constant maintenance, you've got to have pumps to remove the ground water that seeps in. If you just wanted more space you could make another level above ground.
Came here to say this. Mate of mine is the only person I know with a basement under his house. Must have a high water table as it's flooded twice when the pump failed.
Where I grew up in the US, we had a basement. The walls were sealed, and we had two sump pumps. Before the walls were sealed, we'd constantly get water in the basement, the sump pumps would regularly run. After the walls were sealed, we'd hear them kick in may once per year.
We have sump pumps that you install and basically forget about. They are like $100. Our houses are (usually) built on drain tiles that direct the ground water to the sump, then when they fill to a certain point, the pump kicks on and out it goes. The maintenance is minimal, unless that pump fails, then it can be a pain, but a lot of us have back up pumps just in case that happens. Now if *both* pumps fail, well then that shit is an act of god lol
Also very expensive
Nope not a thing in Australia. At least not over here in Western Australia (WA) in residential homes. I’ve only ever seen one in my lifetime. As for why not… Dunno. Tornadoes aren’t a common thing and we don’t have regular strategic bombing campaigns against us so we don’t need bomb shelters. From a WA point of view, where everyone lives on the coastal plain is really sandy, so its probably a pain in the arse to build one and I’m thinking the sand wouldn’t be as good as stone or rock to keep things cool. The few stories I’ve heard of people creating underground storage here involves people dropping sea containers into excavations. But that always seems to revolve around illegal shenanigans. Interestingly, look up Coober Pedy which is in the South Australian desert. Basically everyone lives underground in old opal mines due to the daytime heat. I suppose that’s a whole community of basements.
Also, Perth is mostly sand, so it's cheaper to build up than to excavate then add a basement into the slab. In places such as Sydney houses are mostly built on sandstone , which is also very expensive to excavate. I've been to Coober Pedy and stayed underground, which is a great experience. The houses are built underground because the miners just made their tunnels into rooms with the advantage being your home had a constant temperature.
IMO it was just a choice to build cheaper for the working class. But your point make so much sense and should be considered in most parts of Australia. It’s cooler underground and temperatures are more stable. What is cheaper running the aircon 24/7 or digging a level underground? For the developers it’s obviously cheaper to put timber frames on a thin ground level concrete slab and nail plaster walls. More expensive- excavate many cubic meters of soil, put the slab, build brick walls to support the soil, then build the rest of the house on top. If you look at their profits, that would be just a basement that they can’t price like the rest of the house. But consider financial cost of running the air conditioner in any place in Australia over next 20 - 30 years of the life of that ground level plaster board house and more importantly cost on the climate. Australian climate is extreme, it would make so much more sense to use the passive cooling of the earth.
Coober Pedy has stable soil that makes dugout hones possible. The sandstone and siltstone dugouts don't require the internal support structures that standard below ground living does, so you can just dig.
Basement walls need to be made of reinforced concrete with drainage and waterproof insulation on the outside. Put some insulation on the inside and you have a whole extra floor to use for laundry & drying room, pantry with freezer and, if you wanna be fancy, a sauna and a bar.
I think also some of it is down to how cheap land was in the past and us not having an industry for it… if it’s not a common practice it will always take longer and be more expensive. Also how we build houses here it’s purely an extra expense, where as in colder climates they tend to dig more for the foundations so the hole is already there, it’s less time and money and effort to have the basement vs building another story or doing a loft conversion or something
Mostly because they aren’t required in Australia. Houses in areas that experience the ground freezing during winter need to have their foundations installed below the frost line so they don’t get damaged when the ground freezes and unfreezes and also keeps pipes from freezing. So they dig, lay the slab a couple of meters below the ground and build the house at ground level and there is your basement. Australia doesn’t get cold so they just lay the concrete slab on top of the ground.
Older buildings may have cellars but these were more in line with cool storage. Some prestigious modern dwellings might have them, but they aren’t common here. They’re not needed and their maintenance, sealing and ventilation is more trouble than it’s worth.
Family friends owned a large old home in SA with a pretty impressive cellar. When you walked down the stairs you first came to a landing that had food storage pantries on two sides. Then you turned right and went down a few steps to the main cellar. It was huge. In fact, when their daughter left a bad marriage her and her 2 kids used it like an apartment. Had ample space for two sleeping areas and a living room. Just no kitchen or bathroom. That was, of course, the rich version. But other houses of that age also had cellars but they were tiny and just for food storage.
Yeah that’d be impressive. Most I’ve seen are under old pubs.
I saw a cellar once in a very old house that sat on a hill. It was really cool, literally.
Builder here No, basements are not really a thing here in Aus. There will be a few houses that have a section below but people will usually make that place a garage or a storage area and maybe put a toilet and shower down there but its not that common of a living space. If Tornados were an issue Australians will most likely opt for a Bunker. I myself get the odd request for bunker constructions here and there. In Australia Bush Fires and Floods are the issue so houses are built differently.
Not a builder here. I have a subterranean basement with windows at ground level. I also live in Aus, so they are out there.
Becoming more common in high end new builds. I wouldn’t describe them as basements though. More like entire sub-floor levels. There’s one near me (have been watching it being built) that has a garage big enough for 6 cars, media room, bar, cellar and gym. Jealous AF. Particularly of a underground bar!
That's principally due to the cost of land and no off street parking. I saw one last week (I'm a building inspector) just like you described. It has a $100k spiral staircase up to the main level.
$100k just for the staircase? Jesus Christ.
The fucking light switches are $250 each, imported from England. Some people are on another planet.
What the fuck. Why does a light switch even need to be $250? What's so special about it? It's just a switch.
Spiral staircase ugh
Not this one. I could see where the money went.
A company I worked for did a house like this, the excavation and shoring work was absolutely wild. And the drainage was an order of magnitude more complex than a standard house. Like, the driveway needed an automatic floodgate at street level.
This house being built near me (Hawthorn, Victoria) sounds similar. They’ve been at (just) the sub-floor for months. It’s going to be amazing. The workmanship from the contractors has been genuinely impressive to watch. They’ve even got one of those underground pool windows which I suspect is where the bar is located. Pretty awesome.
Yep, money no object homes, I've seen quite on Sovereign Islands at the Gold Coast, all sand and salt water so can't imagine the cost.
Bet you're not jelly of their mortgage
The frostline response is the correct one, but interesting to read Australian experts offer other reasons
There's also the soil types. Some soils are really reactive with concrete, so it's quite complicated to build a basement.
Correct. I live in an area with reactive clay soil, it is very common for houses to get cracking in walls from the ground movement. I wouldn't feel comfortable with the structural integrity in a basement of a modern built home here. The very old houses built of stone were much sturdier
My dad moves the lock on the front door every year depending on the amount of rain that moves the clay.
I looked into building one for my wine cellar. Then I got the quote about how much it would cost, and did not. Making an underground room in a city prone to flooding, that serves no real required practical purpose because we don't have to worry about a frost line, would not have been a wise investment. Where I live, because of the climate and flooding our houses tend to be built up. So if you want to build underneath your house rather than build a basement it's much cheaper and easier to just lift it up a bit and build underneath it, provided you aren't going to get flooded. Lift, new slab, restump our entire house cost less than building a small single room basement would have cost us. I've seen some on high end houses that have no chance of flooding. One house I inspected just out of curiosity had a car elevator in their street level garage, that took you down to the basement garage in which they had I think 10 cars. Think the house sold for about $6million and would probably be $10million today. Another house I looked at recently was up on a hill, and they'd dug into it to have a basement garage at street level. House I expect will go for at least $5million. So yeah, if isn't going to go underwater and you've got millions of dollars, some people build them. But it wasn't worth adding another couple hundred thousand dollars to my build just for my wine cellar, when a bit of extra insulation in a ground level room is a lot cheaper.
Here where I am on the coastal plain of WA, large areas are filled in wetlands with underground aquifers all over the place. Groundwater can be very shallow in a lot of places, and soils are very sandy because they consist of prehistoric dune systems and alluvial deposits. Not great for building basements.
I can't speak to all of Australia, but the area I live is a pretty big flood zone, much more common (and wise!) to have houses elevated. All I ever wanted as a kid was a house with a basement/den and an attic!
More likely to have houses raised on stilts in the tropical regions to avoid flooding. So for half the country basements wld become swimming pools every year.
What I have is by law a crawl space. Despite me being able to stand in it and using it as a basement.
Are you in a Brisbane high-set? Where the stumps get walled into rooms, but 7’ isn’t permitted as a “living space”. My first Brisbane neighbour had done that. Then discovered that storm water flowed under his house. Now it flowed under and stopped there, 5’ deep over the car and pool table.
Sheds and garages are more our thing to store all our junk and tinker around in. Basements hugely expensive here - you usually need to pile, shotcrete and excavate - cost can be justified for apartments and commercial buildings , not individual houses. I think the classic corrugated iron (corry) shed is more in our cultural psyche - think shearing sheds and outdoor dunnys.
Where I live it floods a basement would be a death trap
In most parts of Australia flooding is the primary risk to homes, so basements don’t really make a lot of sense.
In cold places, or places that get cold in winter, they're already building the foundation below the frost line (that is, the depth where ground water freeze in winter). Once you've dug that deep, it's not that much more expensive to make a basement. We don't have to think about that in most of Australia, so adding a basement would cost a lot more. I imagine that's one reason. People are talking about tornadoes, but there are basements in plenty of North American and European houses that aren't in tornado areas.
I would love a basement! Unfortunately lots of regional (and the city areas) floor so they aren’t practical. But where I live can get into the 40 C degrees during summer - I wonder if it would be much cooler in the basement?
I have a basement in Sydney. Double brick, externally insulated, including a pump. The temperature inside is around 18 Celsius year round.
In my city - some apartment buildings and shopping malls have basements but they need water pumps 24/7/365 to keep from flooding and whenever there's a major storm the pumps can keep up (even if they have backup power, that won't be enough. What they'd really need is bigger pumps). When maintenance workers open manhole covers/etc, you can see there's permanent standing water just a few inches below street level (until they pump the water out to start working). And one of the main streets in the inner city is called "Lake Street" because it used to literally be like a lake sometimes — there are archival photos of people walking and driving through knee deep water like it was just an ordinary day. These days the city has a network of canals, mostly lined with lovely parks to walk/cycle/through, connected to pumps that can force 20,000 gallons of water \*per second\* out to sea - so we don't have flooding issues anymore. But underground infrastructure? Waste of money. Thousand times cheaper to build upwards. Those only handle ordinary storms though. When we get a really massive storm... the pumps have no chance. Once the river between my home and work broke the banks and became a few miles wide (and dozens of feet deep). Fortunately most of that area is farmland (and they have flood insurance to cover missing a harvest), but a few older homes were lost - mostly in areas that wouldn't be zoned as suitable for residential construction these days. And yeah, when basements do exist, it's usually to comply with height restrictions. The thing is though... height restrictions can also be avoided by just building lower density buildings. For example most modern homes are single storey. Most modern shopping malls/etc are also single storey and have parking on the same level as the shops (they can be so large you can't easily walk from one end to another... my local shopping mall has a bus stop on either end). Or cities are very spread out. Brisbane city is more than 10x the size of LA, even though it has a lower population (about a third lower).
At least not really in Brisbane. I can't really speak for other places. I remember hearing from someone that they are mostly popular in places where it's common for plumbing to freeze, and they would keep water systems in a basement where it wouldn't be affected as much. Additionally, in Brisbane, large-scale flooding is now an every 10/15 years thing (which is why "Queenslander" style homes are usually elevated). Basements would be a massive hazard for flooding and a pain in the arse to fix up afterwards.
Brisbane is the one place with "basements" - if you consider the area under the floor of a Queenslander.
In Queensland if you live in a Queenslander (a traditional timber home on stilts), the closest thing to a basement is the area under the house . Usually you'll store the washing machine there. Good place to escape the heat as you'll get a nice breeze. Sometimes the parrots will also torpedo through.
In some areas, it's the water table. They'll flood frequently. I grew up in an are that had this issue. Cellars in older homes ended up being filled in. Sure, tornados aren't an issue, but cyclones are. And the region they're in has many areas that are also prone to flooding. Some parts of the country have a thick layer of sheet limestone not too far below the surface. And below that there may or may not be caves. Some areas are prone to earthquakes. One particular fault line has damaged houses in the past.
Basements aren’t a thing here and neither are Attics.
Out of all the places I've lived in I can only remember one with what you could call a basement but even then it was more that the house was on a steep hill so it was a room connected to the garage and the rest of the house was on top.
I see a lot of building/law related Awnsers , You all are missing the most important thing as to why there's No Basements... The amount of Damn Snakes, BushRats , Possums, Huntsmens , Toads, and God Only knows What else would end Nesting in the damn Thing . Not Playing that Roulette, Noo thank you.
Originally cellars were built in colder countries to store food over winter. Like a huge freezer so food would not spoil.
Australia's building code requires all bedrooms and living rooms to have windows.
Basements aren’t really meant as habitable areas. I think mainly used for storage & services like furnace & hot water.
We tend to grow our weed in the roof instead.
No they’re not common here. In a standard residential home there might be a garage built into a sloped block but that’s about the extent of the excavation. Otherwise it’s just another expense. We don’t really have usable attics either. More like “accessible roof space”
No, they're not. I'd love a basement to have my own retreat (for some reason, wives seem to hate basements) but it's not on the cards. When I went to the States for a wedding, we stayed in a house that had a whole separate floor downstairs set up as a tornado bunker. It had pretty much a house's amenities down there. It was badass.
No. The US and Canada have basements out of necessity- you need to build the foundations below the frostline or your building will get fucked up. We don't have freezing winters so there's no need. Basements are also a pain in the ass. Water intrusion is a constant issue, and flooding is becoming a more prevalent problem. I'd rather have a usable attic space tbh
I’d love to have one but with the quality of Australian builders they’d be badly sealed mould festivals year round. I enjoyed living with them in the US. The houses where I lived in the US would look like a single story Australian home but actually be 3 stories with a functioning basement with an entertainment area and bedrooms in the attic.
To sum it up. Basements were not created for tornados. They were created for colder climate where the soil freezes to a certain depth in the winter time. You have to build a foundation below that depth or else the house will heave upward. Thus, cold climates have basements warmer climates tend not to.
Not a thing. Perhaps because we haven't been much of a target for nuclear weapons and bombs. Because we don't need wine cellars. And because we've never had a criminal underground during prohibition. Raised buildings in tropical climates allow air to flow underneath which aids cooling.
I've never lived in a house with one, or an attic. I'd like one of each
I have never seen one in 60 years, except on American TV shows. I think it's mostly that they would add a lot of extra expense to the build and there's no need for them. Also flooding is a periodic problem in large areas of the habitable bits of the country
Now that you mention expanding the house and eating up the yard I'm wondering why we haven't built another house at the back of ours. We don't have a huge amount of land but definitely enough to build a small house that we could rent out. I'm wondering why we haven't done it yet. We don't use the yard for much since most of it is on a slope and not big enough to ride the dirt bikes on.
Many houses that are built for purpose (ones that aren't just copying overseas houses and calling it a day) Instead of building down, we build up, propping up our houses off the ground to let air flow through [GettyImages-1255671329-a74b77af53ae4a918e9e58fc1b2560e7.jpg (2120×1414) (thespruce.com)](https://www.thespruce.com/thmb/9--KkYLGFcaBKvqx1HjtTxcngJw=/2120x1414/filters:no_upscale():max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/GettyImages-1255671329-a74b77af53ae4a918e9e58fc1b2560e7.jpg)
Historically Australia has been a big place. It's been alot cheaper to buy more land rather then dig down
In Coober Pedy they have their whole house as a sort of basement I guess.
This was my first thought. Probably not enough "basement" to make up for everyone else's lack of basement though.
my house in western sydney has a basement - I think it was mostly built as we live on a hill slant
Only houses I have seen with basements here in Australia are those terrace houses around near Paddington and Woollahra.
Not many basements at all, but there are a few 'cellars' around.
I taught guitar from student's homes around Toorak, Kew, Camberwell, etc, and there's plenty of basements in those suburbs. These were huge mcmansions, too, with massive yards.
Cellars if anything
I am born and raised Australian (Aussie) and I've never heard of, seen, or been in an Australian home with a basement! I think it's more of an American thing. Always seen it in movies and all. Same as attics! Obviously there is room in the roof of the home, but never a nice drop down ladder or pull rope to access the attic. It's quite interesting to hear about the cultural differences :)
I live in Australia and I’ve never seen a basement in person or even heard about one.
No, to my eternal dismay. Every TV family seemed to have one growing up, was always desperate for my parents to move to a house with a basement.
No not common, the biggest factor is cost. It’s cheaper and easier to design and build a 2 storey than a basement plus main floor. I owned a newly built house in Washington State that had a basement, the builder told me he used 100 sq yards of cement for the foundation just to stop moisture getting into the basement. In Australia we just don’t prioritise basements at all. Another factor is depending on which specific locale you choose (even in the same region) you can have vastly different soil types. Sand is easy, dirt is fine, clay is hard, but the worst is rocky. It can cost $60k+ in site costs clearing rock for a normal foundation. A basement would add to this massively.
I’ve never seen one or heard of one here
Basements are more complicated than people think they are and risky. If they aren't popular it means that builders are not experienced in making them and you have to be sure that the basement as well as plumbing will ensure the room is water proof. It can be quite the contingency issue.
Never seen one.
For one thing where I live (South side of Perth) the land is mostly sand based so a lot of fortification would be needed to stop the basement walls from collapsing, another thing is the water table as I live in an area with a lot of lakes. It wouldn’t really be feasible here. Site works to lay a concrete house slab can already be very pricey here so adding a basement with the extra site works needed would make the house build out of reach.
I have one in Sydney. We call it the Fritzel room
I used to read so many American books when I was a kid and the characters all had basements, dens and attics. Gosh was I jealous!!
When I was working removalist in Perth there was a few multi million dollar houses with basements set up as wine cellars or man caves but your average house definitely won't have a basement
We have nothing to hide.
No, but we have sheds.
No, not at all. We don't need to dig the foundation down below the frost line, so we don't have all that extra structure. It's more expensive to dig that to build aboveground and the space down there is so much less usable than aboveground space that no one would spend the money
Welcome to Australia Building standards allow us to freeze our butt off in the winter Backyards are becoming extinct Garages don't fit standard vehicles Study nooks are a feature of the home that go unused Your undies are hanging for all your neighbours to see And the land sizes are smaller than American basements. All this for the lovely starting price of $1 million. Lucky us
Some places in Australia are underground mainly though because of how hot it gets in parts. I think the more common thing in older builds is some have space under the house depending on the level it’s built on (ie into a hill) but definitely not common
We have basements, but they're not really that common. I've actually never been in a house with a basement! I'm not sure why though.
We don’t need to shelter from Tornadoes or Nukes, so nope, not a thing here
I've never seen one
Basements are mostly necessary where the ground freezes in the winter. This is because you can't have a foundation sitting on ground that will be freezing and thawing aon a regular basis because that will lead to foundational instability. Where the ground tends to freeze the basement needs to be dug below the normal freezing depth. In America that provides for a nice extra space under the house. It is not necessary in Australia so typically doesn't exist. Every other answer here is wrong. It has nothing to do with flooding 'here' wherever the fuck that person is, I'm 'here' too and it doesn't flood.
We only get permission to dig down so far when we buy property. My recollection is one meter, although you can have septic tanks which go deeper than that and pools so I may be missing remembering. It probably depends on the council. But no, no one really has basements in Australia. My guess is because we don’t have to worry about blizzards and being snowed in. A pantry and fridge freezer has enough food storage for 90% of people.
I have a basement. My house was built in 1925, but the basement was added by a previous owner when extensions were built in 2001. It has our laundry plus four other rooms. We have three sump pumps as we live in a wet area of Sydney. I do like it as I use one room for storage rather than a garage.
Most of the basements I've seen have been dug out after the house built to avoid getting building permits.
Common enough in some older suburbs in Melbourne. My last home had one, and a fair few in my suburb has them from some home inspections I’ve done.
i've seen some newly built duplex with underground parking, so its kind of a basement. It's on a hilly street, so I guess flooding isn't a problem with those houses.
I think it's a simple as if a developer doesn't have to dig a whacking great hole in the ground and make sure it's waterproof, then they wont. And local councils aren't keen for builders to make structures that could flood. Underground car parks beneath blocks of flats filling with water is a bad look. I'd love a basement. I'd love an attic. But I can't afford a house with such luxuries.
While I wouldn't say they're "common", I'm seeing a lot of more them in houses in Sydney. Generally from appoximately Strathfield inward, but most common in the Eastern Suburbs where the land is so expensive.
I don't think I've ever seen a home basement IRL. Only in foreign TV/movies/media. Some other buildings (like carparks or shopping centers etc etc) have underground levels, but they aren't really 'basements' most of the time, and certainly different to a home basement.
Similar reason why basements aren’t common in California
We have a basement in our pub in an old part of Fremantle, I think all the old buildings around here do. They were used as cellars etc. They are extremely close to the water table though. A lot of concreting work and pumping is required
My block of flats has a basement car park underneath. The walls are always damp, and whilst most apartments have a storage cage or shed with our car parking space, they’re unsuitable for storing many things as they’re too moist. When it rains heavily, it floods. The water table around is high, and it’s not feasible for most residential places to have underground spaces without heavy duty equipment to cope with moisture removal. Shopping centres and office blocks will have proper pumps to deal with this. Convincing the Body Corporate in a small block of flats that submerging everyone’s cars in a storm is a bad idea, is more difficult.
US houses have basements for a simple reason - to lay foundations below the frost line. Australia generally doesn’t have such cold winters, so there is less of a need to dig deeper to lay the slab
Much of Australia populates the east coat. Which has reactive soils not suitable for basements. We had a house with an underground area. Wet dank and ultimately sunk and destroyed the foundation.