Almost all houses in Colorado Springs have at least some basement area. These areas can be categorized as follows:
# 1 A walk out basement. The lot the house sits on typically slopes from the front down to the back. The back, or in a few cases the side, of the basement is level with the ground. Most commonly there is a sliding door that opens to the yard.
# 2 A garden level basement. The bottom of the window sill is level with or above ground level. As you look out the window you are looking at the yard.
# 3 A “window well basement.” In this case a picture is worth a thousand words.
As you see the window sill is below ground level. In some cases only part of the window is below ground level and in other cases the entire window will be below ground level.
# 4 Crawl spaces. You don’t always have to crawl, in some cases there may be room to stand upright and even walk around if you are careful and not too tall. One thing most crawl spaces lack is a heating duct.
Crawl spaces are useful for storage and in some instances people do use them as a hobby room if they are almost always going to be sitting at a desk or work bench. Just be aware that crawl spaces are not technically “habitable spaces” and are not included in the livable square footage of a house.
Rarely is it a safe idea to allow children to play in a crawl space.
Now to keep it interesting a house may have just one or all of the above characteristics.
It is common for a house that has a walkout to also have one or more bedrooms that have a garden level window or a window well.
Builders who may put vinyl windows in upper floor windows often put metal frame windows in the basement. They should be checked for security and energy leakage.
Basements vary in size from a “full basement,” which is the same size as the floor above it to very small basements or crawl spaces.
Ceiling height in a basement can vary from 6 to 7 feet in older houses to as high as 9 feet in some newer construction.
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