On Mon, 05 May 2008 23:44:00 GMT, "William W Western"
<protectedaccount@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> Do they even have/need basements in Cali? <snip>
Many houses built in the '20s and prior, especially if of two story
wood frame design, did have basements, but the Depression largely
finished them off for good, especially in the south parts. Some up
north still were getting them into the '40s, but they're rare. Since
the mid 1950s, most homes out here of all sizes are built upon
reinforced concrete slab. Those in sandy soil areas (the San Fernando
Valley of LA is one case in point) were built on concrete grade beams
and raised wooden floors. Slabs don't do too well in sand, as you
might expect, although some builders used integral grade beams with
the slab with good results.
The house in which my mother grew up in Hollywood was built by my
great-grandfather, a known master carpenter of the WW I era, in 1919
and had no cellar at all, only crawl space between the concrete grade
beams. This was de rigueur for all single story houses probably from
1900 on. The house, built all of stucco over cured hardwood frame, is
still there, valued at around $2 million. It cost $2000 to build in
1919, including the lot. The carved mahogany paneling inside itself
is said to be worth over $150K by itself. Another common feature in
California from that time on that house is a flat roof. "Craftsman"
houses, (mostly ordered from Sears, Roebuck & Co.) all had mildly
pitched roofs, but "scratch built" homes had flat roofs with parapets,
all the styling rage back then. The crawl space underneath was
utilized in the summer to supply cool air into the built-in pantry, a
common feature of all homes in LA of that era. Having the ice box in
the pantry also kept it the coolest spot in the house, even in the hot
summers. Ice supply was never a problem, especially since my great
uncle was the president of Home Ice Company of Los Angeles at the
time. Thus, my family was probably one of the last in LA to get
regular block ice deliveries by horse drawn ice wagon, and went with a
GE "cheesebox" by 1936. I still have pads of the teamsters' delivery
tally sheets, which included wagon number and horse's name.
One area of national interest on this topic is due west of there, the
Conejo Valley of Ventura County. The soil there is probably more like
the "calichi" of Texas...VERY gooey when wet and VERY expansive, with
a high calcium content. It's actually pulverized/eroded basalt that
flowed down over the millennia from the Santa Monica Mountains due
south, and it contains enough silt to make it horridly gooey when wet.
As the soil dries, it contracts markedly, by up to 10% by volume or
more.
In the late '50s, a couple of "get rich quick" ****oesque developers
hit that area, throwing up cheap, slab built homes and selling them as
fast as they went up. Over a few years, the cyclical expansion and
contraction of the idiosyncratic soil lead to the sub-par slabs
cracking into several section, with the pieces skidding in all
directions under load, leaving the house above to bend and waver at
their whim. It didn't help that one of the bigger developers of the
late '50s, transplanted Noo Yawkuh Richard Doremus, was using ONE set
of rebar pieces to go from lot to lot to please the county inspectors,
taking it out just before the concrete was poured. As a result, those
houses, by the '90s, were collapsing. But, due to the high real
estate values, many were simply jacked up and a new, code-compliant
slab was poured underneath, the frame lowered onto it and all major
renovations done, making a very attractive silk purse out of a sow's
ear. Doremus was eventually indicted for fraud, bribery and other
criminal charges, and simply skated on a lengthy prison sentence by
taking the Charlie ****o way out...he jumped off of an office building
in Santa Monica. One Doremus house from 1960 I bought had exactly ¾"
of unreinforced concrete over the soil in the middle of the house. The
house was already falling into itself, but it was a great ¼ acre view
lot, so I bought it anyway, giving the *****sed valuation of the
building as "scrap value." We demolished the house simply by sidling
up a front end loader against the garage outer wall...down like a
house of cards! The rest was simply a matter of scooping up the
debris.
Ventura County, California has the most rigid specifications for
concrete slabs for building foundations in all of North America,
making slab/grade beam construction expensive. Many houses there,
after the great slab disaster of the '60s, were built on grade beams
with raised wooden flooring or on pylons or columns instead. The soil
is also the worst for growing much of anything other than native
California White Oaks (monstrous, some of them) and manzanita brush,
along with other native Pacific chaparral vegetation. The pits for
any sort of lawn or ornamentals. However, for some odd reason, it was
the best for growing stone fruits. I supplied peaches and apricots
to my extended family for years from that soil...IF I'd get a freeze
from the prior winter, which would happen around 50% of the time.
Minus the frost, most stone fruit trees won't bear much come summer.
That soil was also adept at playing host to wheat and barley, which
were the economic engines of the whole valley before the cash crop
became tract homes around 1956.
> May the best man win. <snip>
In this case, that would be the female. It'd be a real kurfuffle if I
could get Noodles to bet his entire worldly fortune (which might
amount to what I have in my chequing account now) on the
outcome...he'd be penniless, wandering the streets of Hazelexico and
Wilkes-Barre on his way from dumpster to dumpster, dodging toxic
dangers all the way.
What a life, eh?
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