Sometimes we ask ourselves why the basement is the coldest place in the house or how to make it so. And if there is no basement in a private cottage? What else can serve as a special multifunctional room designed to store winter spins, household utensils, sports equipment, communications? What is the difference between a cellar and a basement? The advantages and disadvantages of each of them are briefly described in this article.
Cellar or basement?
When answering a question, it is important to understand the goal-setting, the purpose of a room. The basement is an underground non-residential part of the building. Often it is adapted for a workshop, utility room, garage and other useful free space. It is characterized by longevity, the height of a person’s full height, the absence of natural sunlight, the constancy of the average daily and average annual temperature conditions. When arranging it to a depth of 2 meters or lower, the average annual temperature plug ranges between +5 - + 10º both in the heat and in severe frosts, even when no one lives in the house and it is not heated. That's why the basement is the coldest place. Usually it is equipped under the kitchen, but can go along the perimeter of the entire apartment building.
The cellar serves solely as a storage place for billets. This is a kind of roomy refrigerator, equipped with shelves and partitions. It can be equipped with a house, in the same basement, or stand separately in a summer cottage, often on dry slopes, hills to minimize contact with groundwater. It is compact in comparison with the "colleague", you can only look into some designs to get the can of workpiece from the shelf. Its size will depend on the needs of the owner and the estimated volume of blanks. Finance less expensive.
Why is the basement the coldest place in the house?
An average student studying the basics of physics will be able to answer this question on the move: cold air is heavy, dense, it goes down. This is the so-called natural convection. And the heat generated from the heating of the roof by the sun's rays does not reach the lowest room. But this is far from the only possible answer.
Basement Qualitative Features
The basement requires significant investments in construction and decoration (about a quarter of the estimated cost of the entire house). Why? The basement is the coldest place in the house. For this statement to correspond to reality, a quality construction of the structure is required, requiring the determination of the soil structure, the implementation of land (for preparing a volumetric pit), drainage (for the removal of surface and ground waters), concrete work. It is also necessary to make a dense ramming clay castle, a waterproofing sand and gravel pillow, process the walls, the floor (for example, bitumen emulsions). After all, the main enemies for such a room are water, dampness, musty, stale air. Hence, the main parameters that can extend the life of the room are important: the walls are resistant to earth pressure, destructive effects, high waterproofing and ventilation properties.
Thermal insulation is the basis of the basement
Why is the basement the coldest place in the house? The answer to the question is good thermal insulation, which provides protection of ceilings, doors, hatches, walls around the perimeter of the room from freezing.
The use of ultramodern insulating materials (expanded polystyrene, fibrous cotton insulation), as a rule, from the outside of the building, will prevent the formation of condensate, fungus and mold, and will also save 15-20% of thermal energy that will not leave the house, spent on heating unheated premises.