OT Basement project

I am in process of converting crawl space into full basement . "Don't ever do this " lol
I need to attach a 10 inch channel iron to the studs on front of house , to use for shoring up while I finish block wall. What would be the best fastener to use ? Lag bolts , pre drilled holes? 5/16-3/8 ?
Thanks
Bryan

I did just that some years ago. I dug out under the house several feet inside of the foundation, then put supported the house by putting 3 X 8 plank across under three joists supported that with jack posts. I would skip two joists and repeat. After doing a 20 foot stretch like this I took out the foundation in this area. Then poured the footing and set the concrete block. When this was cured I took out the jackposts and repeated the next 20 foot stretch in the same fashion. I completed this project without any cracks in the walls anywhere in the house. I used a small articalateing loader for this. I small skidsteer would work as well.

HTH

Areo

I have a conveyor under house now. Sandy soil ,easy digging . Although once I get one corner done I am getting my small skidloader under there. You can only bribe buddies with free beer and pizza so much ,lol Dad told me he dug out one with his TD 9 dozer .

Bryan: Since what I believe you are doing is called "underpinning" I would support the house ONE WALL at a time. I did this very thing. I used a 4x6 under the floor joist no further than 3 feet from your outside wall. I used a hydraulic jack to jack 4x6 up against joist from the crawlspace soil. I then cribbed under the 4x6 with log cabin type cribbing Doesen't leave a lot of room to work but it can be done. A poor man has creative ways gobble

There are a few good articles out there on adding under (I think JLC had one back in May that was way overkill for most of us).
The rule of thumb we follow when shoring is to err on the cautious side, so bigger beams, bigger bolts, shorter spans. You don't usually get a second chance.
You didn't mention it and probably have it covered, but now is a great time to put in a water management/removal/stop system to keep the basement dry.
On a side note, when I was a kid I watched the neighbor bury a dozer doing this - found quicksand! Was a real trick getting that out from under the house.
Good luck!

Making something better is aways rewarding. Your sweat equity is a good way increase your home's value. Wouldn't most people put a beam under the floor joints near the wall and lift/hold the building up with cribbing or screw jacks?? Maybe there is no existing basement and you have to start from the outside. Many houses were dug out exposing the foundation since the new basement is now deeper than the original foundation. Then they formed up a new wall of poured concrete inside of the old wall to hold the dirt and support the old wall. Sometimes they called this a fruit jar wall since they commonly stored fruit jars on the ledge the new wall formed. The new wall requires a good amount of re-rod and should be dug in below the new floor to resist the pressure. If this is done use strong forms with plenty of "kickers" (hortizontal braces) to support the forms.

I have seen people wanting to dig out their basement break up part of the wall, remove dirt near the top and side in a beam and lift from the ends. Then the rest of the wall can come out for digging. Some have dug the whole end out so they can drive a skid loader in to remove the dirt. A neighbor stuck a small elevator in the basement to lift the dirt out. Good luck.

The way the joists are ran on this part of the house won't permit a beam underneath , won't carry the load of the wall . So I need to fasten beam to wall studs on the outside. for the most part I have been using a I beam and jack posts under the joists . Going in 10-15 foot sections at a time . It is kinda scary at first . Lot of buddies have bailed out because they were scared . I'll post some pics thurs .

> Sandy soil ,easy digging

Please don't kill yourself

I just finished doing this last summer, but didn't do underpinning. I just left enough soil under the footings to provide support (about 3ft in clay). If you do this in sandy soil, you need to really give a lot of space. I first dug it out with 45 degree angles from the footings, then when it was time for making the walls I had a crew and we finished digging out the space for the walls last and I was pretty worried about rain until the walls were done and backfilled. The guys that I had doing my concrete work did a similar job in sandy soil the year before and they had to leave MUCH more undisturbed soil between the new basement wall and the footers. Even in clay, you would be surprised how fast a steep face of dirt will collapse.

Here are some photos of what I did:

Lag screws today are absolute garbage. Chinese or Taiwanese imports. Very soft, you're lucky if you can screw them in without twisting off the heads. If you do get them in the heads twist off when you remove them.

What you want are "construction screws". These look similar to a lag screw, but are much tougher. They are usually made in the US or Germany. Most good hardware stores and lumberyards will carry them. Home Depot now carries the German-made "Spax", which I've found to be very good.

Please post pictures of how you did this and what the after project looks like. I have a crawl space too and a General contractor told me it would cost about $65k to lift up the house and put a basement under my 5 course block crawl. $65k is way over priced in my opinion, but I have no plans to put in a basement. I would be better off to spend $65k and go up with a large dormer addition. No plans for that either.

Guess I didn't get the studs part the first time. Is there a reason you can't attach to the joist under the sill plate? I'm assuming balloon framing here. If not, I would closely look at how the studs attach to the flooring. Usually a few nails, and you would be asking those nails to take the load in tension (pull out), nails being better suited for shear. If you are balloon framed, some 2x blocks at the stud/joist intersections would help to minimize minor movement and cracking if finishes inside.

here are couple pics from last fall . I figure so far I have close to $150 in beer and pizza, and none of my buddies answer the phone anymore .lol

Nice job ! I was going to come in from the original footing and build "Fruit ledge " but footings had caved in in couple places . Kinda why I started whole project in first place.

Uhgh, I wish I had a conveyor. We did one with buckets as kids. Clay till, ie clay with big rocks in it. Two summers of 30 hour weeks, 30 x 50 ft x 4 feet deep.

Two ways to do that. My way, which is the wrong way, or the right way, which isn't my way.

My first home had a crawl space, about 5' deep and I wanted a basement for lots of reasons, including that my area was ravaged by tornados like every year, starting one week after I bought it and I got tired of diving into the crawl space and never having anything to show for it except coming out of the crawl space all muddy, everytime. Now here's the problem. My entire town, at the time was built on solid rock. Two feet deep, rock. So when they built the homes, crawl space up to 5' deep if they were in a good mood. I didn't know that when I moved to that town and bought the home. I went down to the crawl space with a few pales and a shovel and figured a few buckets a night over months, and I'd have it dug out. Problem is that everywhere I tried to stick the shovel, I'd get in about a 1/4" and hit rock. Then I found out the whole town was that way, so I tried a pick axe that only bounced off of the rock and would get stuck into the bottom of the floor and I'd have to twist it out of the wood, but little by little I was making headway until my new neighbors began talking about the John Wayne Gacy (me) that moved into the neighborhood and was always carrying buckets of rock and dirt out of the house. THAT KIND OF TALK, RUMOR ABOUT ME PUT AN END TO MY HAND DUG BASEMENT, and then my neighbors liked me, and we all lived happily ever after for a few years, except I never got my basement...but the cops never came over to see if I was burying people, which I was NOT.

Then we come to the right way to do a basement, which a neighbor of mine did do. They hired a contractor that charged them $7,500 to come over with a small dozer, like a D3 or something like that, went through the back wall and dug out under the house with that small dozer, actually driving around under the house (I saw it do it), as they shored it all up, then poured a new foundation and floor, and got their basement, and since he dug out around the foundation to get through the foundation, they expanded onto their house by extending the basement out more.

There's a right way to do things, and then there's my way to do things, and you don't want to do things my way...trust me.

Mark