Comments on: Lowering the Cellar Three Feet

By: dapluma

dapluma — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 13:36:09 +0000

sorry to hear about that. digging is always dangerous and we will be carefull. osha rules at all times is the way we run our buisness and my homes no exception. thanksfor the heads up. dapluma

By: Gennaro Brooks-Church

Gennaro Brooks-Church — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 16:45:47 +0000

Just be sure you are careful. Two guys just died recently in the neighborhood while underpinning. The contractor didn’t support a weak wall and it collapsed onto the workers.

Only do in small sections and strengthen any weak walls with pointing and/or stucco with wire. At the very least.

By: dapluma

dapluma — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 15:44:00 +0000

Thanks guys! Now that Ive seen an actual underpinning I can do my own. That crawl space was really a waste off space. I think Ill go with an 18″ t shaped footer under mine though, since i have cheap stone and rubble walls down there. I would rather eliminate all the existing foundation but the house isn’t worth it . thanks again guys your pictures cleared things up considerably. dave dapluma

By: Gennaro Brooks-Church

Gennaro Brooks-Church — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 01:40:58 +0000

Hi,
I actually forgot to mention it but there is a footing below the three feet. It comes six inches out from the foundation and is a foot to six inches deep. You can’t see it in any of the pictures because the dirt covered it but you can see the guy building the form for it.

I used Portland cement with 3/4 inch gravel and sand mix. I also put as many stones into the wall as possible. They are, uh, rock solid.

The sewer line from the house is exactly level with the new dug out basement, which means the mains are a couple feet lower. I’m not sure how many. Based on road construction I saw on another street in the area they could be as much as sixteen feet under the street level!

I didn’t put a drain system….it wasn’t specified by the engineer and the earth was so dry I didn’t feel the need for one. It was parched.

In terms of insulation the whole structure (footing and slab) will have two inches of XEPS foam board. I guess I could do more but I feel that is good enough.

You plan to move the building is ambitious but definitely sounds like it would have worked.

By: Vinnie

Vinnie — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:26:29 +0000

while one may or may not agree with the method you used to get there the end result is good. However to be code compliant wouldnt you need a new footing for the wall generally approxomately 2-4″ wider on a side plus a new footing drain? Did you use regular grout/concrete or hydralic cement ro there would be no contracting in the wall as it drys?. I had once considered doing something like this to move a building abot 15 ft. My theory was puting a steel frame under the entire building and a c channel facing up in wich to slide it onto a new section of foundation. never did it but gave it some theoretical thought. In the city often the drain system runs under the floor into through large acess holes. Will your basement now be lower than the surrounding sewer system? If it your own building I might have considered putting in a whole new (in sections) insulated form foundation. It would have been very fuel efficent and lent itself to the green theme. And probably been only marginal in extra work except for material removal.