crawl space

Thinking about the plumbing, it fits here to mention the lack of a large crawl space under the house. This will be what our engineer called a conditioned space, which means that it will have no air exchange and be sealed off, thereby allowing the air temperature in the space to slowly arrive at the same ambient temperature as that of the interior of the house. This means that it is more difficult to deal with anything that must pass under the house such as plumbing, and all such issues must be thought out and dealt with early on. The alternative would be a standard stem wall with a standard crawl space. That would use more concrete, but facilitate the resolution of other things such as plumbing.