Having a look at an old farmhouse that is for sale in the area, and as with most houses in the area of this age the foundation is built on red sandstone blocks, around five feet deep, with a dirt floor. Not very useful to have for much of anything outside of storage space, but it has a lot of floor space as it has the same square footage as the other two floors (roughly 1500+ sq ft)
What I'm wondering is if it possible, and if so, worthwhile to upgrade the foundation to the following:
- Be at least 7 feet with concrete/finished floor
- Able to keep the sandstone walls, if possible (mainly for aesthetics and hence resale…I realize concrete is stronger and probably better insulated)
- Reduce the amount of poles that are in the basement (there seem to be a few of them that dont' have much of a logical layout to them.
Any advice would be most welcomed.
EDIT: Here's a picture of the enterence to the basement in question. I sadly didn't get any pictures of the basement due to the limitation of the camera that I have. You can see the floor is still the dirt floors, with the original stone steps and sandstone blocks. Those blocks are what they used for the foundations, with roughly 6inch diameter wood pillars within the floor area.
Best Answer
You have a couple things going on here: 1) The posts. an engineer would have to evaluate to be sure, but it's most likely that you will not be able to remove the posts without providing beams of some sort to span the space between the walls. Their irregular arrangement probably lines up with walls that they are supporting in the first story, which in turn are supporting the floor of the second story. 2) Clearance. Digging deeper to get additional clearance will be challenging, because you will have to leave the footers under the existing foundation in place, and not undermine them. This means you will likely end up with a floor that is a fair amount smaller than the existing space. Also, you will have to support the part of the house that are held up by the posts while they are being relocated/lengthened.
In either case, you will need advice from someone knowledgeable in building structure and foundations.
Overall, it may be easier/cheaper to raise the level of the house and add additional height to the existing foundation (if it is in good enough shape to take the additional load) than to dig deeper. A contractor that is experienced in this will know how to support the house while it is being raised, and you may be able to include new support beams to eliminate some or all of the posts at the same time.