On Tue, 03 Jul 2007 21:20:22 -0400, Doug Houseman
wrote:

In article .com,
Max wrote:

We have an old basement that is about 6'6"" at it's highest point,
with a block foundation. The floor is poured concrete, not flat,
with the usual(?) small stress cracks.

I was wondering about the feasibility of jacking up the house,
removing the old foundation, digging a little deeper, and putting
a new poured foundation with lots of (8'+) headroom.

I am specifically -not- interested in just digging out the floor.
I'd lose too much floor space that way, and I really would like to
get rid of the old block walls.

Anybody know anything about this?

I've done some googling, and all I've found seems to talk about
turning crawls into full basements. Not quite what I'm about.

I know this will be expensive, but it might be the way to go for
our situation. Having a new finished basement might be more
cost-effective than moving, if it comes to that. We bought before
the real estate price run-up of the last 5-6 years and couldn't
afford to buy in our neighborhood today!


Thanks for your time,

Max

PS: I crossposted to rec.woodworking mainly in the hopes of getting
more input, but also because this effort might result in my own
indoor
shop space instead of an unheated garage. ;-)

I am going from memory, I was 12 when we did this back more that 40
years ago. We cheated and dug out, ourside the current walls and put
footers in down two sides of the house, leaving the current walls in
place (they were field stone - more than 100 years old). then we put
block up and finally got the walls of the house (which were outside the
current basement area) on the two block walls. Once that was done and
the house was supported on the two long walls, we opened up one end of
the house with a back hoe - so that we could get in under the house.
Using a small cat (a 1940's vintage one) we then went under the house
and dug out the basement (it was 5 feet deep to start) again leaving the
old stone walls in place at first. Once we had the center deep enough
that the cat could freely run thru the basement, we ran support beams
from the new block walls thru holes in the old stone walls we chipped
out (this part I remember because I got to hold the star drill). Once
the beams were in place and the house was solidly on them, then the cat
undercut the stone walls and tumbled them into the center of the
basement (the operator was very very good). This done we removed the
stone and the other junk from the basement (i wish there had been eBay
then). Fresh sand and leveling the floor area, then poring the floor and
end footers at one time. Finally block walls on both ends - the block
layer was also very good and had planned the way the blocks would
interlace on the corners so that we did not have to get around stub
walls on each side.

Today the basement is 40 by 20 with 7' 8" under the beams. It had been
less than 5 feet deep and less than 20 by 12.

It took some old timers who really knew what they were doing, but the
house is still occupied by my parents.

Now putting in picture windows is a whole nother story! Charcoal and
vertical log walls!

Cheers

Doug

Last year I saw them doing this in Colorado. Well not really. They
jacked up the house. Pulled it out of the way 50 feet. Dug out the old
basement and installed new poured concrete walls. They slid back the
old house and added on to the back of the old house.