New cellar slab - how to work around boiler/water heaters?

Ideally, you’d want one solid monolithic pour/slab. Some options to achieve this, wait until heating season is over, remove the boiler for the time being (if it’s not something huge) Depending on how many people you have in the house that can be inconvenienced; you could also remove the water heater for a day (you’ll still have cold running water), the concrete will be hard enough to place the water heater back after 16 hours. If the water heater is due for a replacement, you could install a tankless wall mounted water heater before doing anything, though they are a bit hard to vent 100% to code. There are also wall mounted boilers as well, if thats due for a replacement too, this could also be set up with an indirect water heater, creating one appliance for both heat & hot water.

If disconnecting and reconnecting the boiler/water heater, replacing them with wall mounted versions or new appliances isn’t in the budget or current time frame. It’s not that big of a deal to leave them as in. Simply cut the old concrete, leaving 6 inches or so from the water heater/boiler, creating a nice rectangle section of old concrete, place some 1×4 boards against it, and pour your slab. After it cures, remove the boards and caulk the gap. In the future when you are ready to replace the heater/boiler, remove and pour out an elevated slab of concrete 4 inches higher than the rest of the slab.

GreenThinker

in General Discussion 6 years ago

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elm_bk | 6 years ago

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Can anyone tell me what are the options for dealing with existing utilities when you replace a cellar slab? We will be waterproofing our cellar with a perimeter drain, and removing the old crumbled slab and replacing with standard gravel/membrane/concrete. But we can’t get any info from anyone about what we should be doing with the existing utilities.

If you work around those areas, do you compromise the integrity of the cement pour, or of the waterproofing?

Thanks for any info!