A basement or cellar is one or more floors of a building that are completely or partly below the ground floor. Especially in residential buildings, it often is used as a utility space for a building, where such items as the furnace, water heater, breaker panel or fuse box, car park, and air-conditioning system are located; so also are amenities such as the electrical system and cable television distribution point. In cities with high property prices, such as London, basements are often fitted out to a high standard and used as living space.
An unfinished basement used for storage and exercise
Chillon Castle (Château de Chillon) basement
A former Stasi basement hallway
Cellars are often used in pubs to keep beer barrels connected to the bar at ground level.
A storey or story, is any level part of a building with a floor that could be used by people. Plurals for the word are storeys (UK) and stories (US).
A large elevator panel in a North American high-rise omits several floors as well as designating three separate levels as penthouse floors.
An elevator control panel in an apartment building in Shanghai. Floors 4, 13 and 14 are missing.
Letter boxes of a residential building built in the 1970s in Hong Kong. The Chinese and English floor numberings use the traditional Chinese and the British systems, respectively, resulting in different numbers.
A Dover Custom Impulse Elevator control panel with floor numbering. In most buildings in the US and Canada with more than 12 floors, there is no floor numbered 13. The ☆ indicates the main entry floor.
