"But the real interesting stuff is in the cellar and the attic."
- Sherman Alexie
The century home basement. Many century homes have a crawl space but it turns out Gable Oaks has a full sized basement! It is what some people would call a scary basement if you have never seen one before and it needed a lot of work. Our major job this year was to pour concrete on the earth floor. Our plans this winter are to rewire the entire basement and have it neat and tidy. We also added in pluming to outside so now there are three outdoor taps. We decided that we wanted to pour concrete to rid the space of that earth floor smell, and to make it a clean usable storage space and indoor work shop. The concrete will be a means of humidity control and bug control too.
Mitch and Bryan started off by digging the floor out to make way for concrete and still have head room. I shop vac'ed the entire ceiling to make it a clean workable space. Mitch's Dad and brother were a huge help for a full day with the digging. Mitch and Bryan took out the oil tank as we now have gas, along with all the other appliances. We created an elevated pad for all the appliances to sit on.
After digging the trenches for the drainage system, Mitch and I spent two days putting the o-piping in and clear stone over top. Mitch and a friend installed the ripple board, drainage system, and new sump bin. We wanted to prepare the space for the worst. There are no eves troughs on the house yet which can be a cause of water leaking in the future. Water leaking is preventable and next year we are installing eves troughs!
We are very excited that this is a functioning prepared space. It was our biggest renovation that took four and a half months to complete. It will be used for storage and a work shop area and is now "de-scarfied" if we ever want to sell. Thank you to our friends and family for their support and labour! Next task up is replacing the duct work downstairs as well as installing our new efficiant gas furnace.
 |
| The rewiring will be the winter job |
 |
| Gone! |
 |
| The trenches don't look like much, but we went over kill on this one. They are a foot wide and one-two feet deep. We have two high points and they all slope down toward the sump bin. We figured if we are doing a drainage system once, lets do it right! We will also be putting a secondary drainage system in on top that will have floor drains. If there ever was going to be water in our basement, we have it covered! |
 |
| Lots of clear stone for the trenches |
 |
| The sock covered o-piping is now in the trenches around the perimeter of the house as well as through the middle, all leading to our sump bin. |
 |
| Interior weeping/ripple board |
 |
| Surface floor drain system |
 |
| Duct work is out! Time for the new! |
No comments:
Post a Comment