Home BrewingBasement Renovations - No Need to Raise the Roof; Lower the Basement!
When it comes to basements, particularly unfinished basements, a lot of us wish that we could have a little more headroom. Unfortunately, raising the roof is just not an option most of the time, because of the support the basement walls lend to your upper floors and because of all the hassle involved in rearranging the upstairs of your building.
There is another option when it comes to raising the ceiling height in your basement so that you can add another effective living area in your house, and that is lowering the floor of the basement. This is no less labour intensive than raising the ceiling, but you will have far fewer risks to the super structure of your home.
Of course, that does not mean that you donò€™t run any risks to your home when you choose to lower the basement. You could, for example, risk fundamentally damaging the foundation or the footer of your house if you donò€™t proceed with extreme caution. You might also find that the area underneath your house is criss-crossed with pipes, conductors, and so on; underground distribution networks are becoming increasingly more complex.
One way that you can alleviate a lot of the labour and risk to foundations and underground systems alike is to use the services provided by a hydrovac vehicle. Here are a couple of way in which such a service can help you out a lot when it comes to your basement renovations:
Precision excavation: Hydrovac, as the name implies, uses water to break up the ground and at the same time removes the earth with a vacuum system. No need to worry about damaging your pipes as you pound away or dig at the ground in the basement; the water does this for you with no damage to the underground systems.
Far less labour: You will still have to remove the concrete yourself, but the use of a hydrovac will take a lot of back breaking and painstaking work out of the earth removal process, which is going to be the larger task.
Lowering your basement level is a tough undertaking and will take a while to complete so it is important that you take advantage of anything that can make it easier. Hydrovac systems have a great record of getting the job done quickly, and with no interruption of services!