Re: digging basement

Posted by WA-Hal on August 04, 2009 at 14:09:56 from (208.81.157.90):

In Reply to: digging basement posted by Bryan in iowa on August 04, 2009 at 11:06:07:

I helped a friend's family put a basement under an old farmhouse more than 40 years ago. The excavation was done all by hand, and that took a whole lot of time and it was really hard, hot work. We wheeled everything out in wheelbarrows--what we would have done to have a conveyor! The walls were cast in place in sections and we mixed the concrete with a large mixer they had. The days we poured concrete were the hardest work, loading up the mixer and running wheelbarrows of wet concrete to the forms, and then doing it over and over, all day. We went all around the house that way, moving the support beams and forms as we went. When all the walls and interior support footings were done, they actually had concrete delivered for the floor. We backfilled with a loader tractor they had. All in all, it worked out pretty well for them, with only a little problem with leaks in one corner of the basement during the Spring thaw.

But it was an incredible amount of work! They started the project in the early Spring and worked on it all Summer and into the Fall. The Dad was in his 40's and their 2 boys were both in high school. I probably helped out about 20 days or so. They really didn't have much money at the time and the job really needed to be done, as there wasn't much of a foundation on the old farmhouse before that. That farmhouse is still there and still looks real good, more than 40 years later.

If I was going to do something like that again, I would figure out some way to do at least some of the excavation with machinery, like a Bobcat or a small backhoe. Doing all the digging with picks and shovels is too hard work and way too slow. I like the idea of using a conveyor, but will you need to haul a bunch of fill away? It sure would be nice to have a dump truck available, so the fill would not need to be handled over and over. You mentioned that you are going to do concrete block walls. They are OK, but probably at least some of the voids should be filled with concrete and rebar. Doing either block or cast in place walls, I would consider doing a SUPER job of waterproofing the outside and would put in a French Drain system while I had things open. Where I live, I also would strongly consider insulating the outside of the new basement walls with proper foam insulation panels. And when I backfilled, I would put pea gravel or coarse sand next to the walls, so that any moisture would quickly drain down to the French Drain system and not risk any chance of water pooling against the foundation.

And there is no way that I would ever consider mixing that much concrete, shoveling ingredients into a mixer and then transporting the wet concrete in wheelbarrows. It is too slow, labor intensive, and I am sure that casting walls in one pour makes a lot stronger wall than doing it in much smaller pours, even if there is a lot of rebar spanning the different pours. I would pay the extra costs of having concrete trucks come several different times for different walls.

It also could be a fairly dangerous job. You need to carefully analyze how the building is put together, so it can be adequately supported at all times. I would guess that the old farm house was raised up at least 2 inches overall when we were working on it, and in some places where it had sagged, it was raised much more than that. My friends had large beams and a whole bunch of big wood blocks to support the beams. But my friends Dad would not let us be under the house when he was jacking things up, he thought it might be too dangerous for us kids. But nothing really bad ever happened to us while we were working on the job.

After the new basement was in, that family completely remodeled the old farmhouse, replacing all the plumbing and electrical systems, insulating everywhere it was needed and changing the floorplan quite a bit.

I have no idea if they ever had a building permit for any of the work, but in my area, a person would never get away with doing anything that drastic to their house today without building permits and inspections. I would suggest at least checking out what is necessary where you are. Inspectors can get really ornery if you don't do things the way they expect you to.

Good luck, and you are going to need it!

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