make the cellar usable, your experiences

French drain, lowering floors, rearranging pipes, bringing light into the cellar …
what have you done to make your cellar dry and and part of your living space, and how well has it worked?

Augustiner

in Cellar 13 years and 7 months ago

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slopegirl | 13 years and 7 months ago

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my neighbor dug hers out and did it properly by buttressing and supporting party walls on either side. She said it was more work and way more expensive than she thought (in fact she said if she had it to do over again she might not do it) but the results are great-looking. I got the impression it cost over $100k. It IS a great looking space though. She has custom cabinets as well as nice big glass doors out back to yard.

Augustiner | 13 years and 7 months ago

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Thanks for your story nsloper, I like your practical approach! The oil discovery is probably more common than we think, my guess is that most leaks are not reported correctly.

I feel like digging a hole in my cellar now – how deep should I dig?

underpinning seems to be necessary in most cases. Sounds expensive. btw, I found this post in the archieve that is very specific about costs: http://brownstoner.staging.wpengine.com/forum-archive/2009/01/estimates-for-c/

pickles | 13 years and 7 months ago

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I’m cleaning mine out right now.  Have a guy that’s going to repoint the foundation wall, paint the cement floor, hook a dehumidifier into the drain. 
I’m looking for photos of a house in williamsburg that was featured on this site.  It had a semi-finished basement that had a wine cellar/medieval look to it.  Does anyone know what i’m talking about or have any other photos for inspiration?

nsloper | 13 years and 7 months ago

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BTW, I did put in recessed lights, paint the ceiling white, and paint the cement floor dark blue before putting down the rugs.  I put my unused furniture downthere, and arranged it nicely into a laundry / guest room.  I created a separate part of the room for storage, and separated it with a long velvet curtain.  I am short so I am comfortable w/ the lower celiing, but I did put padding around the pipes and beam you have to duck under to get to the “tall” part of the room (w/ a 6’3″ ceiling, which is much better than the 5’1″ ceiling where you enter the room).  Now if someone’s head clonks they don’t get hurt at all.  The room actually looks and feels great except for when it floods, which is about once every two years.  Then it is a massive pain to quickly get everything up off the floor.  Still, my guests tell me that they are comfortable down there (I do not tell them about the flooding or have anyone stay down there if there is a chance of hard rain!)  and it is great having laundry in the building.   I just put the sump pump in last week, and hopefully that will take care of any future flooding.  Ask again next year!  Good luck – –

nsloper | 13 years and 7 months ago

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My experience is similar to brucef’s, on both counts.  After spending thousands of dollars on experts, I now know that I live over an underground stream and that should I wish to dig down or build another story on top of my townhouse, my foundation would need significant underpinning via helical piles.  We also discovered that a neighbor’s unused underground heating oil tank leaked some years ago, and I had to remediate the oil in the wet dirt – more thousands of dollars down the drain.  I decided I didn’t need a $100,000 basement after all.  A bit of paint on the walls, a nice indoor/outdoor carpet which can be washed off, and a sump pump in a corner, along with coming to terms with a low ceiling and occassional flooding, did the trick for me.

skimania | 13 years and 7 months ago

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Yeah, we’re thinking about doing this in a new bstone purchase. The basement already sticks above groud by like 4 feet, so it gets some light already. The previous owners built an extension in the back, and dug that out lower than the center of the basement, and that room looks great. The question is, can we lower the center now so it’s all one height. I read a times article about a guy in bed stuy who almost destroyed 3 buildings when he crumbled one of the foundation walls trying to dig out the basement and that scared me, but I think we’re gonna try anyway.

brucef | 13 years and 7 months ago

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Not so well. Digging down, you could strike water ( I have), but more likely you may discover that the foundation does not go down far enough, which is a no-no, without further underpinning.