more head room in basement

[Alvis]

I have an addition of the house built about 30 years ago and I would like to create a bit more headroom in this basement portion. The past owner used this room as a clean room to make portions of airplanes. Without the HVAC the exposed floor joists are about 6'3" of clearance, I would like to finish the room and a put in a ceiling. I know that there is no electrical or plumbing in the concrete and at one end where the room slopes towards there is a hole lined with a metal bucket laid in the poured concrete. It would seem to me that there us a good 8-10 inches of poured concrete based on the sounds I get from hitting the inside of the bucket. How deep can I go down - I would like to get another

6 inches of headroom. I guess it is more important to know can I do this? What could I do to properly check the depth of the crete and also How do I check for the footing on the exterior wall and thier depth. I figure that once I am down to the height that I want then I would pour new concrete to level off.

[DerbyDad03]

You could start by removing the bucket and seeing how thick the concrete is at that point. I assume you can't just pull the bucket out, so you might have get out some tools and "peel" it out in sections. However, this is only going to tell you how thick the concrete is in that corner. Many times a slab is poured thicker at the edges to form an integral footing. See:

For the rest of the slab, get a masonry bit and drill holes in the slab in various places until you break through. By measuring how much bit it took to get through, you could get an idea of how thick the slab is at those points.

But think about it: even if the slab was 8 inches thick throughout the room, if you want 6 more inches of headroom, you'd be left with only 2 inches, which I'm sure isn't enough. Plus, you got to decide on what type of finished floor you want and account for that also.

I doubt the slab is more than 4 - 6 > I have an addition of the house built about 30 years ago and I would

[DanG]

The depth of the existing footing will be one of the big deciders. Go to an inconspicuous corner, break out the floor, dig down and expose the footing - top to bottom. If your proposed floor elevation will work with the footing and there is no buried plumbing under the floor that is in conflict, it's just labor and money from there.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ DanG A live Singing Valentine quartet, a sophisticated and elegant way to say I LOVE YOU! [e-mail] (local)

(national)

[Don Young]

Regardless of its thickness I don't think it would be practical to remove only part of the concrete. It would be much easier to remove all of the concrete and re-pour a new floor. That would be a major undertaking that you should give very careful thought to before starting.

Don Young

[Edwin Pawlowski]

Yes, like take a sanity test. About 10% through the process you'll be wondering why you didn't just buy a new house.

[<aemeijers]

Probably less labor to dig on the outside of the house, to locate the footer level. If previous owner built airplane parts in there, I am making the rash assumption that this is some sort of walkout arrangement? If so, somewhere near the door, there is probably a good spot to dig and/or water jet a probe stick an inch out from the foundation wall. If the footer was laid properly, there should be several inches of it outside the wall.

aem sends....

[Goedjn]

I dunno, rent a saw and chop it into 36x12x4" blocks, and they&#39;re only around 150 pounds each. You can pile them up into a wall in your front yard, or use them as curb-stones around your driveway.