Jethro wrote:
On 10 Sep, 13:10, "Doctor Drivel" wrote:
"Jethro" wrote in message

...

totally idle curiousity, but what would be involved if you wanted to
have a basement ... obviously a bit of digging :-) but what structural
aspects, and what planning ones ?
cheers
Planning? It may come under permitted development. Best have one that
does not go right to the house foundations - an inner basement - so the
foundations do not move. It needs to be tanked and have air vents . A lot
of mess, but if you are not living there and space is at a premium in your
area then worth going for. The utilities, hobby rooms, storage can all be
there. The staircase will take space from the ground floor. Make sure it
is very well insulated.

You could run a heat pipe around the perimeter of the basement, which will
cool and vent the house. Could be in the earth. Popular in Germany.

Some companies specialise in basements.

i was wondering what effect removing that much earth would have on the
rest, especially near the foundations ? I guess you could brace the
resulting void with steel girders ? I presume by tanking you mean
creating a waterproof seal to prevent flooding ? Never heard of a heat
pipe ?

I saw my ssisters house being build in germany with te mandatory cellar.

Essentially the cellar was a reinforced cast concrete box, inside a DPM
inside a polystyrene box.


It WAS the footings!!

And therein lies your problem. You need to brace the footings, but also
insulate the walls..and a styrene box inside the footings will not do that.

I would imagine one way to do it would be to dig as for underpinnings,
deep down outside the wall, and add more concrete and some insulation
outside the house, then back fill.

Inside, you need to essentially underpin the footings as you would
normally - i.e. a section at a time, dig below the footings, shove in
insulation, then concerte then DPM then more concrete.


Unless the house is so large that you can dig up a single room less
about 3 feet, and cast a cellar inside that space..

Also, be ware of flooding issues. That German house got filled with raw
sewage. Yes the sewers were below cellar level, but they blocked. People
higher up the hill...

British sewers wont be. By and large, so saniflows to do the dirty work,
and a STRONG possibility that a backed up sewer will render the house
uninhabitable for weeks. Or make it a water free zone.

Personally, if I were building from scratch again, I'd do it for the
hell of it, but retrofit? No WAY Jose..;-(