Seeking some advice on basement renovation

And the right lighting and air circulation can go a long way, in the meantime. I feel for you.

workisfun

in General Discussion 3 years and 4 months ago

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j.e.c2769 | 3 years and 4 months ago

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We recently renovated a small 2 story, single family row house in Brooklyn. Next up is the basement, but from what I’ve learned thus far – just makes me depressed.

The basement is unfinished, thin slab/dirt floor and 6′ ceilings. Now, i initially thought we would dig and proceed with bench footing until I concluded that filing with DOB + drawings and reasonable contractor is going to cost about 100k. Given the interest rates now, it’s really not possible for us to spend this much.

All I really want is to control the dampness a bit more with a basic waterproofing and just 3-4 more inches. I’m 6,3″ and I just want to be able to have some private space to work on music. It’s 33′ x 14.5′.

Is it possible that there’s still some room to dig before hissing the footing and with not creating any danger? Or completely impossible.

Or, is it even possible to dig out just a small section in the middle so that I could put a desk there and stand comfortably?

Basically, is there any scenario in which I can do something without filing and maybe spend no more than 30k? It doesn’t need to be luxurious.

Any suggestions much appreciated.

cate | 3 years and 4 months ago

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From my conversations with engineers, contractors, and reading here, it should be possible for an experienced company that specializes in this to remove the existing floor, lay down a vapor barrier, and put in a thicker floor. AFAIK this does not require a permit. It will not add headroom. But done properly it will not subtract headroom either. And they work around your existing equipment such as a boiler and protect it. Beware of using anyone inexperienced. A friend did that, the concrete set up too quickly, and they lost more than a foot of existing headroom and had to reconfigure their plans for the entire building. People on here have recently given estimates of about $20,000 for this work. I have not priced it and have no idea if that is in the ballpark.

j.e.c2769 | 3 years and 4 months ago

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Thanks, Cate – helpful to consider

Lurker | 3 years and 4 months ago

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You might be able to do a weird dug out man pit area—hopefully an architect can advise on that.
At issue with what you actually want is that it’s not just the floor you’re dealing with, you HAVE to deal with walls and supports of the structure above. We dug out our rowhouse legally, which had like 7 foot ceilings and found there was plenty of space to go down–it’s in relation to the depth of your foundation (and soil type etc). We dug out multiple test pits and then eventually dug down like 18 inches and put in vapor barrier, insulation, 4 inches of gravel and 4 inches of mesh and concrete, and we didn’t need to touch the foundation which was a relief and cost savings.
But digging out the floor and pouring a new one alone would be 20-30 I imagine at least, and we also had to put in a steel main beam (our house is 20 wide, so maybe you don’t’ need it with 14 wide) and then new lally columns because the old ones obviously were too short after lowering the floor, and those needed footings , and all your walls have to be rebuilt because the floor is lower. You just can’ t hack around with that–your house and your neighbors houses depend on it. Even if you got someone to do a code compliant job and not file it, if anything happened your insurance wouldn’t cover you. I’m sure people do it all the time, but the risk is massive.

j.e.c2769 | 3 years and 4 months ago

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Thanks for this. Can I ask – when you say dug down 18 inches, do you mean straight against the foundation walls? You had that much unused space there? Or, do you mean you did underpinning, or bench footing?

bobjohn | 3 years and 4 months ago

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there are several issues:
– to have a “legal basement”, it has to be 7` high. It has to be more than 50% above the ground. So you cannot dig dipper if you do not have like 4` above the ground already.
– if you gid dipper, you need a specialist contractor who can provide the correct underpinning of your foundation,. Otherwise, your house might fail. This all has to be done with the approval of DOB.
– since the space will increase, you likely will pay higher property taxes.

andriywww1990 | 3 years and 4 months ago

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I do not think the op is looking to make a legal basement per se. The op just wants a little more head room. Op seems to have moved off the idea of having this engineered and filed and is asking to gain a few inches.

Op, we are in the same position here. I just need 4 inches so i can run a girder and not hit my head on the girder.

Can i ask, is your fondation stone or concrete? Do you think you have a stone or concrete footing?

I had a contractor come look at mine. He told me how to do it and how much wall we needed to build on the inside of the bottom of the existing foundation. There is a formula. I forget it.

Op, if you are trying to gain 4″, i might tell you how i would approach that here. But i have poured concrete and if you have stone, i don’t want to encourage anything like this.

andriywww1990 | 3 years and 4 months ago

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There is a guy who used to be on here. Restoration Contractor. His name is bill from laredo construction. I consulted him about this for my own house.

j.e.c2769 | 3 years and 4 months ago

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Correct, I’m trying to see if there is any legal, safe way to gain 4 inches. I do not need a legal, livable space. @doorsby – I actually do not know what the footing is. I was hoping to find someone experienced to do some sort of probe. I did have an engineer come out and take a look, but he was sort of in and out, then proposed digging down 2ft and installing bench footing. I was fine with that until I realized how expensive it was going to be and getting a good rate on a loan these days is out of the question. Thus, I’d be happy to just gain 4 inches if there’s any way to do it. I’m thinking my foundation must be stone because it’s more than 100 years old and I do not think they were pouring concrete back then. The slab that’s on the floor currently is basically an inch or less of poured concrete that’s so thin it’s dirt on one half. I guess I need to figure out how much deeper the wall goes to the foundation. If I’m at the bottom already, then I don’t think there’s anything I can do except bench/underpin. However, if the wall/foundation goes down quite a bit more, th en I’m assuming you can dig out the dirt completely level with the foundation. Going any further than that would threaten the structural integrity.

Lurker | 3 years and 4 months ago

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Our test pits at the walls showed the foundation kept going far below where we dug down and so it was safe to build without putting in bench footing. Also our front and exterior foundation walls were 18-20″ thick.

j.e.c2769 | 3 years and 4 months ago

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Man you got lucky. I think I’ve honed in on someone to come out next week and dig some test pits. I guess I’ll know then.

andriywww1990 | 3 years and 4 months ago

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ok, as much as i like to come on here and tell people what i know, i have to admit when i do not know something: i am not a structural contractor. that does not mean that i have not dug footings and have not been on jobs where a foundation is being poured, but i have to ask people about this stuff just as much as any homeowner on here. hence, why i call restoration bill of laredo construction.

i did bring bill here and we i told him what i originally wanted to do, which might have been a gain of like 10″, he mentioned a bench footing and that was it, i did not want to hear anymore. same thing that happen to you.

so i thought about how far down i really had to go to give me enough height to put a girder in. i need 4″. i do not know if i can safely remove 8″ of rat slab and earth from here without compromising the cellar walls/footings and really, i am not inclined to ask anyone (sounds stupid right? this is where people get in trouble). this is my plan: around the perimeter of my cellar, i will dig out one 5×5’x8″ section (maybe make it a 4×4″x8″ sec tion), possibly making it a little deeper at the edge along the wall – like a curb on a road -and maybe add some rebar to that curb and fill it all with concrete. give it a few days and when that section has cured, go move to another 4×4 section. and so on and so on. once i have the perimeter done and stabilized by this system of slabs and curbs, then i move to the middle and dig it out to 8″ and pour 4″ of concrete. when this is all said and done, we have 4″ of concrete (which is the thickness of a sidewalk) plus the addition of a curb, all butted up against the cellar walls. will it matter that it is 4″ lower? i do not know.

this is only what i am thinking. it will be interesting to see what others say.

i would not even consider something like this with a stone wall. but, if you have someone with a lot of talent you can ask or if you bring an engineer back in, maybe you can consider is what luker is saying. if an engineer told me i could do something like this, i would probably tell him to draw it and make him put his stamp on it and i would then follow that drawing to the t.

does anyone on here know how safely someone can dig to the bottom of a footing? and how wide they can dig along a footing? that is the question and different soils & different materials = different conditions.

jimhillra | 3 years and 4 months ago

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It sounds like there’s some confusion over terminology. There’s a difference between footing and foundation. The foundation is the walls you see when in the cellar (also different from a basement). The footing is at the bottom of the foundation and is usually significantly wider than the foundation. It spreads the load from the foundation over a wider amount of earth so the foundation doesn’t cut through the earth like a knife.

In older houses, the foundations were stone (large pieces mortared in place), and did not have footings. These are called rubble foundations. Some foundations went well below the depth of the slab/floor for any number of reasons. In these cases, you can dig down to a couple of inches above the bottom of the foundation, and pour a new slab there, as long as that slab locks in the foundations so they don’t slip inward over time.

When exceeding the depth of the foundation, an engineer usually suggests a formula of between 1 to 1 and 1 to 2, depending upon the quality of the soil. That means in good soil, every foot dug down requires on e foot of horizontal buttressing, or benching. In worse soil you may need as much as two feet horizontal for every foot vertical.

Maybe this will help give an idea of how much room you’d have left within the buttressing after digging down a foot or so.

andriywww1990 | 3 years and 4 months ago

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Thank you jim. The confusion for me is not the difference between a footing and what we call a foundation and i sometimes call a cellar wall. With the exception of cellar wall, when i speak of those terms, i am not using them loosly or interchangably.

I was hoping we could safely dig down to the footing in a poured concrete foundation. By what you are saying, it seems not because by the time we hit the footing, we could have already compromised the foundstion wall (if even over time). That was what i was trying to speculate.

I was hoping you would weigh in here. Thank you.

For others reading what i was thinking of doing in my reply above, what jim is saying is an engineer must be consulted no matter what with any excavation along the cellar wall.

jimhillra | 3 years and 4 months ago

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Doors, you can definitely dig down to the footing. Typically, if there is a footing, the cellar slab is sitting right on top of it, so there’s not much to be gained there. If you want to go lower than the footing, I would assume the same guidelines apply, but they may be more intrusive as the width of the footing would already be eating into the floor space. To be honest, we’ve never excavated in buildings with footings, only those with only foundations. That’s not to say we’ve chosen not to do it there, just that we’ve never had a request to do so.

andriywww1990 | 3 years and 4 months ago

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Jim, when does a cellar wall become a foundation? I have always been confused about that.

j.e.c2769 | 3 years and 4 months ago

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[IMG_1379](//muut.com/u/brownstoner/s3/:brownstoner:Tm1t:img_1379.jpg.jpg) [IMG_1380](//muut.com/u/brownstoner/s3/:brownstoner:z4yR:img_1380.jpg.jpg)

jimhillra | 3 years and 4 months ago

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When you decide to call it that. 😉

Really, it’s just semantics. Even a basement wall may be a foundation. The difference really is when the above-ground wall changes construction type to withstand the lateral forces from the earth around it.

j.e.c2769 | 3 years and 4 months ago

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Thanks for the clarification on terminology. I am learning. I’ve had the test pits dug and it doesn’t look promising. I’ve got 9″ to the bottom of the foundation. And it appears our row house has no footing, just a strait brick foundation right on the ground. I have an engineer coming on Tuesday, but I suspect he’ll suggest the full treatment of digging further under the foundation, bench/underpinning, etc. Well, at least I can rest knowing what the situation is. Maybe in the near future construction prices will come down a bit as the free money ends there will be less work.