No owner of a private country house will be against the idea of building a basement. After all, the underground not only serves as a warehouse for food supplies, but also plays an important role in the thermal insulation of the room. The only problem is that in a finished house, digging a basement is more difficult than at the stage of building a dwelling. In addition, you need not only
make a basement with your own hands, but also protect it from moisture, which is extremely harmful not only for the foundation, but also for the safety of your supplies.
If the foundation of your house is located below the level of freezing of the soil (however, the way it should be), then there will be nothing complicated in earthworks. But before digging, in no case do not forget to contact the survey company! It may happen that the soil under your house is generally not suitable for any kind of work due to the possibility of shrinkage.
We’ll talk about how to build a basement with our own hands today.
Digging!
First, decide where the entrance to your "catacombs" will be located. Of course, it is better to make it where it will not bother anyone, where there will be no chance of accidentally falling into it. Starting to dig the basement with your own hands, immediately solve the question regarding its depth. The fact is that with large volumes of earthwork you will have to solve the problem with the columns on which the sex lags lie. In this case, a channel or I-beams will come to the rescue , which, to save space, is best laid along the walls.
By the way, it is better to immediately think about where you will put all the pulled out land. It can be sent to the garden, or you can make a filling out of it.
So continue. After digging a foundation pit and leveling its bottom, pour up to 0.4 m of high-quality fat clay without organic impurities onto the floor, after which it must be rammed to the state of a stone. After that, the walls are strengthened by making brickwork or using a ramming machine. Then you need to wait until the clay on the floor dries, and then fill the surface with a layer of thick concrete with a thickness of 10 cm.
If it’s warm outside, the material can dry in about a week. After that, two layers of roofing material are rolled over it, and the sheets should be fastened together with molten bitumen. For the best result, you can spread a high-quality plastic film on top. Along the walls we leave allowances of at least 15-20 centimeters. Doing the basement with your own hands, try to carry out all the work as carefully as possible, without rushing.
Left allowances are also firmly welded to the wall. To do this, use the same molten bitumen. To make the fastening as reliable as possible, a small retaining wall is laid near the wall, the sole purpose of which is to press the materials to the foundation. After the cement has dried in the masonry, its top is poured with concrete. After it dries, the entire supporting wall is carefully plastered.
Some owners are wondering how to make a basement in the garage (with their own hands, of course). In principle, the sequence of work is the same. However, there is still a slight difference, but it consists in the fact that digging deep pits should be taken much more seriously.
Now you can go to the outdoor work. A layer of molten bitumen and mastic is laid out on the base. If groundwater is near the surface of the soil, then you should not use bitumen as a means for waterproofing, in which case you will need better and more modern materials. As you can see, making a basement with your own hands is not such a difficult task. The main thing is to take work seriously and responsibly. And then you will surely succeed!