Im after some advice on my garage guys.

I have very little space to work in and I need more!

Basically I need to know if I can dig out safely under my house to make some more valuable space.

This is my garage, well part of it:


and this what I would like to do at the moment.



Green bit is the little wal made out of nothing more than breeze blocks really. Purple are the concrete posts holding up the house. Orange is the area I would like to dig out.

I dont know how far down the posts go into the ground, people have told me that they didnt always go in the same distance, so I cant really tell.
The house is on a hill, so as you look at the photo you are looking up the hill and you can see the gap between the floor and the house gets smaller as you go forward.

If anyone can advise or even come around for a quick look that would be great, I dont expect anything firm from my fantastic artwork :P

Cheers!

You can dig it out if you want, as long as you don't affect the stability of the soil there will be no issues. It you dig it out and then add a retaining wall to hold the soil back there will be no issues.

The posts there are in compression and the depth they go in will depend on the soil type and composition.

As a guide if it was stumped after around 1995 which I doubt, but it gives an indication of current rules and regs they would need to go into the soil a minimum of 750mm (this is for a 200mm square concrete stump like in your pic) and would need to be backfilled with concrete at least 125mm on each side of the post (ie a 200 square in a 450 square hole)

So if you stay say 200mm from your post and build a block retaining wall when done and then backfill there will be no issues at all. Or you could simply put in a couple of acroprops and drop a few posts out, dig it down, put in a pad and then add a steel post after the event (usually 100x100x5mm) then you have much more room and the cost is pretty cheap.

You could also laminate some steel onto the bearers and just remove the post all together all though in these old houses you sometimes get a big of deflection in the floor if your not careful.

Really just comes back to how far you want to go and how much you want to spend.

Yeah, plenty of possiblities, I just dont want to cause any perm damage at all. I think in the future we may get the entire thing dug out and raised to legal height, but as things are at the moment we dont have the cash.
Spose I better see if I can get a builder in to at least show me the best thing to do.

Oh for a huge garage like some of you lucky chaps have!

Cheers!

Hey Gibbo

Give me a call and I will try to drop round briefly to have a look at your house. Ph 0427 857002. My company does major renovations so we get to deal with this kind of thing regularly.

cheers
Marcus

wow, thanks Marcus. I will give you a bell tomorrow.

Thanks again!

Gib

Hey Marcus, I'm still keen for you to have a quick look if you can, please PM me when you can.
Was down in the garage today making more space... grr the garage annoys me, so much wasted room.... bah

Cheers!

You will probably need Council approval and an engineer involved. You may be able to go even bigger by using a steel beam or 2
Cheers
Nicko