Pictures!
Here's the house we're starting with.
Backstory: 1920's construction, built on top of a landslide in the middle of earthquake country. The house is as much as 8" out of level, with a sagging living room floor due to a missing vertical support down below.
Project scope: construct a liveable space on the ground floor for the parents to reside, saving them a 20' climb to the bedrooms. Beef up the foundation to current seismic standards. Level the house. My wife and I will move in upstairs. The middle floor will be common access -- kitchen, dining room & living room.
This is a few days after construction, and the wood stairs and front porch has been demolished.
The trench represents approximately how much farther we're digging down to get below the landslide, onto stable dirt. The new foundation slab will take 18" of this. The house itself will be lifted to accomodate demolition & construction, than lowered back to its existing height.
This is the access hole the contractor poked into the house to begin preparation for the dig-out and lifting.
Here is a good illustration of the existing floor height, and how much farther down we're digging.
A shot from the front, with the house lifted off of the old foundation.
The old foundation wasn't substantial, and was badly failing. I'm told the house was mostly off the foundation along the rear.
A challenge was the neighbor's house, which is very close. Our project is essentially digging an 11' cliff right up to the other house's foundation (also failing).
To shore up the neighbor's property, our contractor bored down and poured hold-back pillars. This was also done along the back side of the house.
Jumping ahead, this is just days prior to the pour of the main slab. The 18" slab is heavily reinforced with steel. A second big concrete pour will fill in the three crib pits and tie in some work at the front of the house that's not yet ready.
