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Joined: Jul 2004
Posts: 9,923
Likes: 32
G
Member
That is all great as long as you are above the water table and nothing changes that. My sister bought a house with a dry basement and a year later the school behind her built a track that was slightly below grade for a natural grandstand effect. That ended up rerouting ground water and flooding her basement. Nobody in the government would take responsibility but when they also had street flooding problems they put in storm drains and she sneaked her sump pump system into the storm drain. That mitigated the problem but it was never totally dry in there again.
Otoh when I was having my house built I demanded a walk out, at grade entrance to the basement and made them pour the foundation and grade the lot accordingly. I also bought a lot at the top of a hill. We never had a water problem.
In Florida everything is at grade or higher. FEMA makes that about 14 feet above sea level if you are anywhere near the coast. That either results in a stem wall house or building on a mound.


Greg Fretwell
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Joined: Jul 2002
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Trumpy Offline OP
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Originally Posted by gfretwell

In Florida everything is at grade or higher. FEMA makes that about 14 feet above sea level if you are anywhere near the coast. That either results in a stem wall house or building on a mound.

Greg, could you please define a "stem-wall" house, for an out of towner?

Joined: Jul 2004
Posts: 9,923
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G
Member
That is where you dig and pour a foundation, lay up 4-5 courses of block, fill in the box with dirt, pour a slab and then build the house off of that. It gets your finished floor above the FEMA flood plane without having your foundation on fill. Then they backfill around the stem wall to make it look like you are built at grade.
My wife was the queen of the stem walls, building more stem wall houses than anyone else at Centex in SW Florida. (over 100). It was just because of the swamp they assigned her as her patch. They brought something like 1000 acres up 4-5 feet with fill.


Greg Fretwell
Joined: Jul 2002
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Trumpy Offline OP
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Thanks for defining that Greg,
That sounds pretty cunning when you think about it.
You learn something new everyday here.

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