Home construction w/caissons

[Repetto]

I'm looking at building a home on a lot that has a high water table and subsequently requires caissons (i.e. no basement). I don't know anything about them. How difficult is it to build with them? What is the cost of building w/caissons v. a full basement? Are there any other special considerations that need to be made? How can I find out more about building with them? Thanks in advance!

[roger g]

I built my first house in my early twenties and the lot was noted for being completely under water in the spring. Mind you, I didn't know this at the time. The cheap price and the old for sale sign should have clued me in on something. I don't think the water table was high but was obviously suseptible to flooding. This might not apply to you but I built straight up. I scraped the top soil off and built my basement then put my bungalow on top of that. I then got lots of fill (they were doing seweres in town at the time) over a few years and eventually ended up with a basement underground. I've seen people dig a pond and use the fill to cover their raised basement walls. I also ran lots of drainage tile under the basement floor and drained it into a sump hole where a pump used to drain it away. In the spring the pump rarely stopped. I never had a wet basement.
I'm not familiar with this caisson thing.

Roger