@@diycrawlspacedigoutunderpi4201 I started out in 84 as a machinist, joined the Millwrights in 92, it got slow in 06 got a in house maintenance/Millwright gig to the present. I could tell by the way you Work and fab stuff up. only a MillWright can under stand that....Happy Retirement Lee...
You should be very proud of this project and I'm grateful that you documented the whole thing. It must have been very tempting to ditch the camera after a few weeks and just focus on the work. So glad you stuck with it.
Thank you, Sean. I appreciate your comment. It was VERY tempting to ditch the camera, but partner Joe & I figured that someone down the line might see some value in seeing a different approach an underpin, or at least recognize how much work they are before they start one.
Just finished bing watching all of your videos. Great project. I want to dig out a basement under my house here in australia. Mine is a bit differnt to yours tho. The house sits directly on a concrete slab, no crawl space. Im thinking of digging a ramp in from the font of the house, and under pinning foundation as i go. I dont know how much the slab will need to be supported in the middle. I need to consult an engineer.
@@diycrawlspacedigoutunderpi4201 That's right Lee, you have a good memory. I have cut up the rock and underpinned the brick walls but still some tidying up to do.
Have you built the stairs down to the basement? And if so is there a video of the final result? And are you going to build out the basement? Bedroom? Bathroom? Shop/craft room? And even better, will there be videos???
Yes, I built stairs down to the basement. They are placed where the mine shaft was in the beginning. Threre are extensive videos showing detail on the build out, remodeling, site reclamation, etc. There are 30 videos total on the channel, and there is a link on the end of the videos. No we're not going to build out the basement. I was 68 when I started this, and 70 when it finished. Did it mostly to keep active in retirement and add value. Thanks for watching.
@@diycrawlspacedigoutunderpi4201 I watched what I thought was all of them, so I'll have to go back and see wat I missed. Ps I still think you should build a room or two..
Excellent work. I was watching all your videos. I would like to know why the underfloor heating circuit is so far below the concrete floor. Because if it were higher it would take less time to heat the floor. Is it so the floor doesn't crack due to heat? Greetings from Argentina.
I don't know of a practical way to get the tubes up into the center of the pour, but even if they could be, it raises two other problems. First, the wheelbarrows or a concrete pumping hose would subject the tubing to even more abuse during placement. Second, with the tubing higher in the body of the floor, there would be greater risk of getting a nail driven through them when interior walls are built. Thank you for watching.
Another consideration is the potential for slab expansion/contraction and the inevitable cracking of the slab that results. While Lee's job looks perfect to me (and I'm a concrete contractor), if any movement occurs in that slab those heating circuits could spring a leak. My $.02 anyways... ;)
@@davidepperson2376 The guys that make the tube accounted for some shift. The tube is so pliable that it would just squish if mis-shaped. In the extreme - there are five circuits in the floor. If one were to leak, we would just cap it off. Thank you for contributing to the info. It's sure to help the next lunatic that does a dig out.
Beautiful work. However, I don't understand what you mean by "early frost under the driveway let us pull trucks up and spout the pour." How does frost help? Also, does "spout the pour" mean conveying the concrete down the trucks' extending chute? Thanks.
We got a serious cold snap, and 2" or so of frost under the driveway made made the driveway perform like a 6" thick member, instead of 4", which allowed us to pull the trucks up to the garage and discharge from his truck chute into our basement chute. An added benefit, when frost forms under the roadway, regulations make the trucks carry lighter loads, which also helped us. This pour was 3 trucks, where in summer it would have been two. If we didn't have frost, we would have pumped from the curb, which would have added cost & one more component to wash up on a cold day. Thanks for watching.
@@diycrawlspacedigoutunderpi4201 Thanks. That comment in the video confused me as well, but I've spent my entire life in Southern California - thanks for the clarification.
Great work....I'm going to guess - your are an engineer? Also...one thing that caught me eye in one video was the copper water line main - I would have run a sleeve through the wall in case that ever has to be replaced.
Thanks. Close guess, but in my career I was a millwright first, and an engineering/ project manager second on heavy fabrications and commercial buildings. I never got a degree. Good catch on the sleeve, and yes we did sleeve both pipe entrances. After the wall panel was poured, I pounded the hole with concrete with crumbled up styrene insulation mixed in. Thank you for watching, and for your informed comment. Our purpose here is to share information.
@@mrpickles49 Yeah he had nice toys, and it looked to me like he made/modified most all of them. Clearly he has drawn on decades of old-fashioned EXPERIENCE and a very engineering-oriented brain. (On a side note, my father was an electrical engineer for a large steel mill, and many of his friends/co-workers worked as non-degreed engineers. Anyways, they were an eclectic group to say the least, always doing cool projects like this one etc, and they had several patents to their names, including the one that is on every string-trimmer that allows you to bump/feed new string.)
Did you consider isolating the floor pour from the walls with a .5” asphalt strip? Without that, the hat loss into the retaining walls must be significant.
I've never seen expansion joint used on the perimeter of a basement floor. If there is any heat loss at the perimeter of the slab, it must be negligible. We haven't noticed any. Thanks for watching, and for contributing to the discussion.
@@diycrawlspacedigoutunderpi4201 I bet you are very happy you put the hydronic heat into the slab. It helps the entire house. The narrow gap that an expansion joint around the interior perimeter is also helpful in catching water that may leak through the walls. But I saw that you have no drainage problems.
@@kevinhornbuckle We are very pleased with the system. The tank we use is actually one tank inside another serviced by the new boiler. Outside tank is for the floor system, and inside tank is for domestic hot water. You are correct there is NO water problems here. Our house is on top of a gravel ridge that the glaciers scraped out to form the Green Bay body of water, which connects to the Great Lakes.
As always Lee that's amazing work. I can see why you hired the last part. Instead of smaller manageable chunks that you two could handle this is one large chunk! Are your plans to finish the basement and make more living space?
Thanks Joe & I would have poured the floor ourselves in sections, but winter came early & we probably wouldn't have got it done this season. I'm only going to build one storage room in the front corner of the basement, & leave the area with the windows wide open for the next owner.
I don't mind at all. All prices are in US dollars. I had invested about $16k in equipment that I bought or built. All of it except for the mini excavator (that I still need) sold a few weeks after the job was done. So, short story, there will be no cost for equipment. One of the big savings was that we could dump spoil 100 yards away under permit, and the other was we mixed our own concrete @$42/ yard. I am retired, so I didn't take any wages. My partner Joe was paid something. Originally I did not budget for a new boiler, water heater, or in floor heat. All the general contract totaled about $46k US. The heating system added about $8k more. The total outlay was very close to the discount we got when we bought the place to begin with. A house with a crawl space is a very hard sell around here Thanks for watching
The basis - This was 99% DIY after a career in heavy industries and commercial construction. We invested $46k US for base price, and added in floor heat, which bumped the budget about $4k US for the basement. Later, we built out a staircase where the down shaft was, and remodeled the utility room & bathroom above, which added maybe $8k more. I am still working on other improvements. Thank you for watching.
This was a DIY project for me & my brother-in-law, Joe. We both had long careers in big commercial construction & machine moving/ building projects. Including radiant heat, new furnace/ AC, electrical, and plumbing, the basement costed about $51k US. I don't know what a current contractor's cost would be. Budget slipped a little when we put in-floor heat in, and we sold the equipment when we finished the underpin. Thank you for watching.
crazy! jacking the house and extending the walls upwards would have been way less time and expense. Even if you still wanted the radiant heat in the floor a pour over existing slab would have still saved you $$$. How long was your property torn up and has your wife left you yet?
Jacking the house over 4' above neighborhood grade would have looked like a sore ass, and would have costed more than we invested. Property was never torn up. There was almost no outward evidence of a project. We lived in the house throughout the project with no heartburn or inconvenience.
![Lp. Сердце Вселенной #60 РОЖДЕНИЕ ЛОЛОЛОШКИ [Финал] • Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YoR0pAV9FVQ/mqdefault.jpg)
It turned out amazing. Im so happy you documented everything as well.
Thanks. My purpose in documenting was to make sure the next lunatic who does a DIY underpin realizes how much work they are.
Great work, we've been doing a lot of these basement digs up here in Denver recently !
Thanks. I've been watching your stuff. Very impressive!
Thank you for watching.
This Guy is my Hero, Most Awesome Job!!! He's Got a be a Millwright, they are the only ones crazy enough to do shit like this...
Thanks. Yes, I was a millwright for most of my career. I am AMAZED that you guessed that!
@@diycrawlspacedigoutunderpi4201 I started out in 84 as a machinist, joined the Millwrights in 92, it got slow in 06 got a in house maintenance/Millwright gig to the present. I could tell by the way you Work and fab stuff up. only a MillWright can under stand that....Happy Retirement Lee...
You should be very proud of this project and I'm grateful that you documented the whole thing. It must have been very tempting to ditch the camera after a few weeks and just focus on the work. So glad you stuck with it.
Thank you, Sean. I appreciate your comment.
It was VERY tempting to ditch the camera, but partner Joe & I figured that someone down the line might see some value in seeing a different approach an underpin, or at least recognize how much work they are before they start one.
Just finished bing watching all of your videos. Great project. I want to dig out a basement under my house here in australia. Mine is a bit differnt to yours tho. The house sits directly on a concrete slab, no crawl space. Im thinking of digging a ramp in from the font of the house, and under pinning foundation as i go. I dont know how much the slab will need to be supported in the middle. I need to consult an engineer.
Glad you found the videos. Best of luck with your project, and if you're ever in north central USA, swing in for a cold beer.
You sir have an amazing ability to get a big, difficult job done in a super professional way.
Excellent result and hats off to you.
If I remember right, you had a rock to remove in Australia. If yes, you got 'er done yet, mate?
@@diycrawlspacedigoutunderpi4201 That's right Lee, you have a good memory. I have cut up the rock and underpinned the brick walls but still some tidying up to do.
Have you built the stairs down to the basement? And if so is there a video of the final result? And are you going to build out the basement? Bedroom? Bathroom? Shop/craft room? And even better, will there be videos???
Yes, I built stairs down to the basement. They are placed where the mine shaft was in the beginning. Threre are extensive videos showing detail on the build out, remodeling, site reclamation, etc. There are 30 videos total on the channel, and there is a link on the end of the videos.
No we're not going to build out the basement. I was 68 when I started this, and 70 when it finished. Did it mostly to keep active in retirement and add value. Thanks for watching.
@@diycrawlspacedigoutunderpi4201 I watched what I thought was all of them, so I'll have to go back and see wat I missed.
Ps I still think you should build a room or two..
Excellent work. I was watching all your videos. I would like to know why the underfloor heating circuit is so far below the concrete floor. Because if it were higher it would take less time to heat the floor. Is it so the floor doesn't crack due to heat? Greetings from Argentina.
I don't know of a practical way to get the tubes up into the center of the pour, but even if they could be, it raises two other problems. First, the wheelbarrows or a concrete pumping hose would subject the tubing to even more abuse during placement. Second, with the tubing higher in the body of the floor, there would be greater risk of getting a nail driven through them when interior walls are built.
Thank you for watching.
Another consideration is the potential for slab expansion/contraction and the inevitable cracking of the slab that results. While Lee's job looks perfect to me (and I'm a concrete contractor), if any movement occurs in that slab those heating circuits could spring a leak. My $.02 anyways... ;)
@@davidepperson2376 The guys that make the tube accounted for some shift. The tube is so pliable that it would just squish if mis-shaped. In the extreme - there are five circuits in the floor. If one were to leak, we would just cap it off.
Thank you for contributing to the info. It's sure to help the next lunatic that does a dig out.
@@diycrawlspacedigoutunderpi4201 Next lunatic - hahaha. Love it!
Beautiful work. However, I don't understand what you mean by "early frost under the driveway let us pull trucks up and spout the pour." How does frost help? Also, does "spout the pour" mean conveying the concrete down the trucks' extending chute? Thanks.
We got a serious cold snap, and 2" or so of frost under the driveway made made the driveway perform like a 6" thick member, instead of 4", which allowed us to pull the trucks up to the garage and discharge from his truck chute into our basement chute. An added benefit, when frost forms under the roadway, regulations make the trucks carry lighter loads, which also helped us. This pour was 3 trucks, where in summer it would have been two.
If we didn't have frost, we would have pumped from the curb, which would have added cost & one more component to wash up on a cold day.
Thanks for watching.
@@diycrawlspacedigoutunderpi4201 Thanks. That comment in the video confused me as well, but I've spent my entire life in Southern California - thanks for the clarification.
Great work....I'm going to guess - your are an engineer? Also...one thing that caught me eye in one video was the copper water line main - I would have run a sleeve through the wall in case that ever has to be replaced.
Thanks. Close guess, but in my career I was a millwright first, and an engineering/ project manager second on heavy fabrications and commercial buildings. I never got a degree.
Good catch on the sleeve, and yes we did sleeve both pipe entrances. After the wall panel was poured, I pounded the hole with concrete with crumbled up styrene insulation mixed in.
Thank you for watching, and for your informed comment. Our purpose here is to share information.
@@diycrawlspacedigoutunderpi4201 ...beautiful work!...and you had some nice toys. Thx for responding - hope you are enjoying the basement. John
@@mrpickles49 Yeah he had nice toys, and it looked to me like he made/modified most all of them. Clearly he has drawn on decades of old-fashioned EXPERIENCE and a very engineering-oriented brain.
(On a side note, my father was an electrical engineer for a large steel mill, and many of his friends/co-workers worked as non-degreed engineers. Anyways, they were an eclectic group to say the least, always doing cool projects like this one etc, and they had several patents to their names, including the one that is on every string-trimmer that allows you to bump/feed new string.)
Did you consider isolating the floor pour from the walls with a .5” asphalt strip? Without that, the hat loss into the retaining walls must be significant.
I've never seen expansion joint used on the perimeter of a basement floor.
If there is any heat loss at the perimeter of the slab, it must be negligible. We haven't noticed any.
Thanks for watching, and for contributing to the discussion.
@@diycrawlspacedigoutunderpi4201 I bet you are very happy you put the hydronic heat into the slab. It helps the entire house. The narrow gap that an expansion joint around the interior perimeter is also helpful in catching water that may leak through the walls. But I saw that you have no drainage problems.
@@kevinhornbuckle
We are very pleased with the system. The tank we use is actually one tank inside another serviced by the new boiler. Outside tank is for the floor system, and inside tank is for domestic hot water.
You are correct there is NO water problems here. Our house is on top of a gravel ridge that the glaciers scraped out to form the Green Bay body of water, which connects to the Great Lakes.
As always Lee that's amazing work. I can see why you hired the last part. Instead of smaller manageable chunks that you two could handle this is one large chunk! Are your plans to finish the basement and make more living space?
Thanks
Joe & I would have poured the floor ourselves in sections, but winter came early & we probably wouldn't have got it done this season.
I'm only going to build one storage room in the front corner of the basement, & leave the area with the windows wide open for the next owner.
If you don’t mind me asking... how much did that job cost
I don't mind at all. All prices are in US dollars.
I had invested about $16k in equipment that I bought or built. All of it except for the mini excavator (that I still need) sold a few weeks after the job was done. So, short story, there will be no cost for equipment.
One of the big savings was that we could dump spoil 100 yards away under permit, and the other was we mixed our own concrete @$42/ yard.
I am retired, so I didn't take any wages. My partner Joe was paid something.
Originally I did not budget for a new boiler, water heater, or in floor heat. All the general contract totaled about $46k US. The heating system added about $8k more.
The total outlay was very close to the discount we got when we bought the place to begin with. A house with a crawl space is a very hard sell around here
Thanks for watching
Question: Did the residents have to move out during the dig out?
No, we did not move out. My wife & I own the house and we stayed there throughout the project with no problem.
Thanks for watching.
What does something like this on average cost?
The basis - This was 99% DIY after a career in heavy industries and commercial construction. We invested $46k US for base price, and added in floor heat, which bumped the budget about $4k US for the basement.
Later, we built out a staircase where the down shaft was, and remodeled the utility room & bathroom above, which added maybe $8k more. I am still working on other improvements.
Thank you for watching.
Great job! The music is a nightmare though
Sorry to say there is not much music to pick from that is available to use without getting tangled up in copyright issues.
Thanks for watching.
What the going rate for a project like this?
This was a DIY project for me & my brother-in-law, Joe. We both had long careers in big commercial construction & machine moving/ building projects.
Including radiant heat, new furnace/ AC, electrical, and plumbing, the basement costed about $51k US. I don't know what a current contractor's cost would be.
Budget slipped a little when we put in-floor heat in, and we sold the equipment when we finished the underpin.
Thank you for watching.
crazy! jacking the house and extending the walls upwards would have been way less time and expense. Even if you still wanted the radiant heat in the floor a pour over existing slab would have still saved you $$$. How long was your property torn up and has your wife left you yet?
Jacking the house over 4' above neighborhood grade would have looked like a sore ass, and would have costed more than we invested.
Property was never torn up. There was almost no outward evidence of a project. We lived in the house throughout the project with no heartburn or inconvenience.