The Big Dig: Hand Digging Out A 100-Year-Old Basement

our basement had low ceilings and for a long time I had planned to get a little more space in the house so we decided to dig it out the first step was to remove some old walls clean things up a little bit and then insulate and trim out the joist phase the next step was to get lighting and electrical done well I could still reach the ceiling pretty easily well this is a bit of a mess wish I could just snap my fingers and clean it up we got a nice window at restore and even though we wouldn't be using it for a while we needed to know the dimensions for our egress thus began my first little foray into digging then it was time to cut out the egress just a little bit dusty [Music] I needed some way to haul all the concrete and dirt out of the basement so I felt I liked all the beasts wagon [Music] I got a winch and anchored it in the ground with concrete [Music] and I found that I could haul up about a thousand pounds at a time if you haven't used a jackhammer in your life I highly recommend it [Music] Don Quixote thinks I've got blisters on my hands-free workout [Music] [Music] the truck went up on two wheels trying to get this load out once we started digging and quickly discovered that the SDS max hammer drill was a shovel bit was the way to go although the first bit broke pretty quickly I hope I hope [Music] I wish this whole job wasn't an laughs lest you think I did this all myself I did have a little help from my friends that's what beer is for [Music] [Music] [Music] this is one base a lot of power just moved thirteen thousand four and it's before breakfast we built walls as we went just to keep things short up [Music] a couple more pallets we dug the floors out to different levels just depending on what the purpose was for each area the deepest being a little over ten feet for the golfing area all told we dug out about 350 square feet anywhere from a little over eight feet deep to a little over ten feet deep and we pulled out somewhere between 80,000 and a hundred thousand pounds of dirt and concrete because of the piecemeal nature of the walls we had to use bag to concrete and we used over 300 bags of concrete which is over 24,000 pounds [Music] next we added pea gravel and plastic to allow for air flow under the concrete floor for the carbon monoxide fan [Music] and of course we had to put a little time capsule under the concrete floor we had a truck bring in the concrete for the floor I built a wall to go between the furnace slash storage room and what would be the workout room [Music] finally it was time to get to the finishes primed all the concrete and then we textured everything with our skip trowel [Music] framed out the egress window capped the walls cleaned up the old copper pipes made a little epoxy window [Music] then I did my best impression of Bob Ross - the sweet do [Music] and some happy little trees I short up the window well with small wood from a deck [Music] spray-painted some of the pipes posts and beams painted we kept the ceilings open and used a matte black to give it a clean finished look added a rubber floor to the gym and hey finally eight months after I bought the window I was ready to install it right before winter [Music] little furniture shopping at restore and then some modifications [Music] a dartboard cabinet from all-defense wood and a custom golf club holder to finish things off all told we put about $10,000 into the materials including the furniture the projector etc I put 740 hours of labour into it and we had another 80 or so hours from friends and family [Music] I used some mini LED lights to create a ceiling and wall gallery of some of my photos [Music] it's been about a year since we finished the project the journey was an end in itself and we loved the space down here it's been well utilized admittedly mostly by my son playing fortnight but I've also gotten a lot of golfing in on the simulator on cold days and my games definitely gotten better we've also watched a lot of family movies down here and we even got to have a Super Bowl party here [Music] [Music] Don Quixote can suck it

Channel: Poppa's Cottage

Views: 3,524,447

Rating: 4.836092 out of 5

Keywords: basement dig out, digging basement, basement remodel, basement refinish, basement finish, home golf simulator, home gym, home theater

Id: JuIy5h3qqlE

Length: 14min 54sec (894 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 06 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/sasteve97]

I’m not a builder or an architect. How would this affect his foundations?

[u/Jeffery_G]

Saw so many people in the 70s doing this. So labor-intensive. As someone said, if you want a basement, buy a house with a basement. Don’t undermine the planned foundation of your expensive house.

Edit: and here in the Deep South, you’ll likely hit red clay...every surface would have to be sealed against moisture and that battle cannot be won.

[u/chickfilattio]

Gustavo Fring would like to know your location

[u/Kruzat]

Structural engineer here: I would be very interested to see the design of this foundation because I'm skeptical how they were able to account the following:

1) The lateral load at the bottom of the existing wall due to the lateral earth pressure
2) The lateral load at the bottom of the existing wall due to the resulting lateral surcharge load from the vertical load of the existing foundation wall
3) The lateral load from the earth pressure on the new wall.

I scrubbed through the video and did not see any of that addressed. From what I can see, and I could be mistaken, the new walls are not restrained against rotation at the base, and they are not restrained laterally where the new wall meets the old wall (essentially there is a hinge here) unless the walls are quite a ways below the finished slab elevation (which it did not look like was the case). The only areas that may be ok are the areas which do not have a very long horizontal span, so where there a lot of jogs in the wall. If my understanding is correct, the longest walls will likely move eventually, and will create leaks and possibly collapse. No I'm not kidding.

I should ask some of my clients if it's ok to share some photos of what inadequately constructed foundation walls can look like in a few years, because I want everyone to know what an absolutely terrible idea this is without an adequately engineered design. It looks good now, but some areas absolutely will not hold up unless I've missed something (which is possible.)

[u/TheDeadlySquid]

Might have been cheaper and easier to buy a house with a walkout basement.

[u/Fuqwon]

One mans quest for a home power rack...

[u/sonia72quebec]

All of this work and it's ugly and dark and doesn't look safe.

[u/AboveAndBelowTheLine]

/r/ATBGE

[u/[deleted]]

No sump and no drainage for the egress window.