digging basement

Anyone ever put a basement under a house ? We have a crawl space, in process of putting in full basement . Least the digging is mostly sand .Got a conveyor though one wall . Doing one wall at a time . Footings , then block wall . Any tips ? oh yea,free beer if you bring a shovel !! lol

Really big stout I-beams to hold the house stable while you jack it up.

I hope you are in sand not clay.

No, But I have had my house moved to a new foundation. There will be more beams needed. If you look at the house you will see pole or block under the house you will need a beam to replace sturcture. Thicker beams or more beams are needed if the floor trusses are only 6 or 8 inch. Go with 9 foot walls to keep the venting and plumbing up out of the way. Check how good your seal plate is it may need to be replaced. Good luck. Beer isn't enough!

Our house basement was done that way about 1950. They did it in sections while blocking it up. Left a shelf about 3' high and 3' deep all the way around.
A neighbor did the same way using a tiller and wheelbarrow - this was in clay ground. He did it after work in about a year. The boys were glad when that job was done too!

if you are digging out the crawl space you made need engineer for information, at the least do NOT dig near existing footer if it is to continue to be load bearing. Too many people dig to edge of footers and then over time have new settlement problems. The footer provides support for foundation in pattern similar to upside down V, dig to close to footer and you can undermine this support, HTH, Mark

My Great grandfather did that in the 1950's I think, the basement walls looked terrible from what I remember. But....the house never caved in over the course of 50 years. The house was dozed in the late 90's to make way for a Costco parking lot.

No, never done it myself, BUT. Back in the 70s, I lived at Marion SD. 2 brothers, one moved houses, one dug basements. They would move the house first, situate it, then dig the basement. The digger did not like being under the house, so got himself a remote control dozer! As a kid I remember this being so COOL! Greg

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!

WA-Hal gives alot of good advice. The only additional I have is personal experience. My family and I did our basement in '83-84. The house had a partial stonewall basement. I used a small homemade payloader. Dug a ramp to get under the house and dug out 15-25 ft distance at a time. The house was supported by about a dozen jackposts during the each dig. Then poured footings and layed concrete block in this area. Then dug another 15-25 area and repeated the process. Completed the process in two summers (sealed the open area over winter with dry laid block and viscreen). Had no cracks in the walls as a result of all the jacking during this process. The crew consisted of My wife, and three sons 8th, 5th, and 4th grade and myself. In my opinion having clay subsoil is an atvantage due to it's stability.

Areo

Does it ever rain there? take note of where the rain off the roof will go if you get a downpour. make sure it will not wash under any of your temporary supports. Don't ask how I know.

Once you establshed load bearing walls & piers. You could use a mini-dozer with FEL. Years ago I helped with a hand shovel. Not the way to do the job.
Led

My sister and brother-in-law did two houses in two summers for two of their kids. Used two small skid loaders and a lot of sweat. Also some help from my brother and others.