Walkout Basement

[txdon]

Am I in over my head?

I have started to dig a 48X32 basement on the side of my hill.

Has anyone dug their own basement.

Red Clay is under the first four feet of sugar sand.

 

[txdon]

This 12' wide 4' deep strip took about 3.5 hours and was about 60-70 FEL scoops of sand. The clay I figure will take twice as long. I figure the total project will take about 75 hours. If I run into trouble (rock hard clay)I can always call a dozer out but now it is kind of relaxing and fun. I have about 6 months to play around.

I moved the sand to level the garage and workshop site about 40 yards away.

 

[bmac]

<font color="blue"> Red Clay is under the first four feet of sugar sand. </font>

All I would say is enjoy the first four feet. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[2nstonge]

txdon,

Looks like a fun project - here's a walkout basement that's in the not so fun stage. The owner used landcape timbers to as a retaining wall, less than 10 years later it collapsed.

3 pics...

-Norm

 

[jim_wilson]

Or lucky that you don't live up here in rock country. I've been my BX to excavate the hole for my new garage and I have been lucky so far - I have only hit one rock that I could not get out and it can be left in place. The rest were movable - but some just barely - by the BX. The rest is hard digging. Most of the time I have to break up the soil with the backhoe then scoop it out with the FEL - with a toothbar on the bucket.

 

[2nstonge]

partially excavated...I spent 3 days just digging, a HUGE pita was that as the timbers rotted all the 10 inch long spikes fell out and became mixed in with the dirt. I had to sift thru every inch of this with a hand rake to avoid getting spikes in the tires.

 

[jim_wilson]

Notice how the pile of rocks is pretty big compared to how big the pile of excavated dirt is.....

 

[2nstonge]

Almost done - I then had to load all the timbers into my dump trailer and haul them off to the transfer station. 2 loaded trips in a 7x14 dump stacked 4 feet high.

-Norm

 

[EddieWalker]

Hi Don,

Are you starting to build your house? Did you retire already?

I've never done a basement, but the biggest concern I've heard is to be sure not to overdig any areas and refill. You won't have the same compaction on a place you refill. The other concern is standing water. If you dig it out and the weather turns bad, it could be quite a long time to drain, unless of course you plan for it and install some sort of drainage.

Is it going to be a full basement on all four sides, or a three sided one with the front side taking advantage of that view you showed us?

As for the sand, I'd sure save that in a handy pile for future projects. Sand is a wonderful base material for just about everything.

Eddie

 

[Highbeam]

I would assume by the walkout description that the basement is a 3-sided hole. It should drain itself. We see a lot of these types of basements used when the building site is on a hill since there is all that wasted space under the level house. Sometimes folks only install half of a basement to avoid the big excavation but still take advantage of the wall on the downhill side.

A basement is a dandy deal. The temperature is regulated by all that dirt and unexposed to wind or sun. Taken to the extreme you have those people who dang near bury their homes.

I agree that the biggest things for future consideration is moisture cotrol and structural integrity of the basement floor and walls. Underdrain the heck out of it.