Digging down a foot would cause water problems? Hard to imagine.
Raise the house instead?? Goodgawd....

Note that I suggested digging down just for the footprint of the machine.
He could always pour concrete back on top of the base of the machine!

Actually, I've heard of a few people who dug down the whole area of their
basement to get that critical few inches of headroom back.
If you figger a 12x12 area (fairly sizeable), that's about 5 cubic yards for
each 6 inches you dig, ie, 10 yards for a foot of depth. I have easily dug,
bucketed and dumped 1 cubic yd in an hour (loose dirt). Well, not quite
easily--you do huff and puff.
A Bosch hammer, or an air hammer can usually make short work of most floors.
Here in pricey-pricey Westchester, NY, a 10 yard dumpster, unlimited weight,
is between 3 and 4 hundred bucks.
So, it's not for the faint of heart, or for those allergic to manual labor,
but it's still quite doable.
And that's 12x12.
For a mere machine footprint, hell, you could have the wife do it!
And put the rubble out with the regular garbage, little by little.
--
Mr. P.V.'d
formerly Droll Troll
"Bruce L. Bergman" wrote in message
news
On Thu, 16 Feb 2006 10:08:49 -0500, "Proctologically Violated©®"
wrote:

You can lower your basement floor--no foolin. Depending on the type of
floor, may not be as much work as you think, even if concrete. Now,
concrete w/ rebar can be a pita, but abrasive saws can make short work of
that also.
If you take the head off, you can dig out *just the footprint* of the
mill,
set the base/frame in place, *then* put the head on--that way you have
much
less digging to do.

Before suggesting something like that, you may want to determine how
high the water table is in the OP's neighborhood, and what kind of
waterproofing they did to the basement floor slab.

If they knew this was a potential problem and did extensive
waterproofing of the hole before they built the house, and you disturb
it, you've just unleashed an artesian spring in the guy's basement...

There are Burke horizontal/vertical mills, often w/ small Bridgeport
heads,
pretty small table. Really cute, two motors. A guy by me has one for
about
$2K.

Oh, holes thru the ceiling are not unheard of! Mebbe she can use another
island!

No, you call a general contractor and a house moving company.

The house movers slide I-beams and jacks under the house and pick it
up about two to three feet (depending on how dumb the original builder
was about leaving low ceilings) and the general contractor raises the
sills of the foundation to meet the new level. Bingo, instant
headroom in the basement.

-- Bruce --

--
Bruce L. Bergman, Woodland Hills (Los Angeles) CA - Desktop
Electrician for Westend Electric - CA726700
5737 Kanan Rd. #359, Agoura CA 91301 (818) 889-9545
Spamtrapped address: Remove the python and the invalid, and use a net.