advice needed please

[Badger1bear]

Hi guys, our neighbours house has just been put on the market. I thought we had the same size cellar but I am happy to see that their cellar is much bigger than mine. My cellar is accessed from outside the house and is situated under our kitchen, its not massive but its somewhere where I can go to tinker and it saves going down the garden to the shed. In my cellar there is a square opening which is around 18", you can see thru into what would be the space under our dining room. This area had been used as back fill when the place was built by the looks of it. I was always a tad weary as to how far the foundations went down to have the room excavated to extend my cellar and have a bigger workshop/cellar. Now that I see that the neighbours have already had this done it gives me me confidence that our footings should be good enough to have our back fill area excavated. My questions are, do I need planning permission to do this ? what would be the pitfalls of doing this (no pun intended) would it put any value on the house. I estimate the room is 12' x 12' and the depth of spoil to be removed would be about 6 feet. Losing the spoil would be no problem digging it out and manual labour would be the only cost ( I hope) have any of you had any experience with this and what sort of money would I be looking at shelling out ?

I know its a lot to ask but this place is a fountain of knowledge and there is always someone who knows

Regards Simon

 

[Robotstar5]

Buy your neighbour's house and knock the 2 cellars into one?

 

[Badger1bear]

Buy your neighbour's house and knock the 2 cellars into one?

im not turning this into "The great escape"

 

[colnerov]

im not turning this into "The great escape"

No. Because that would require three, Tom, Dick and Harry.

 

[colnerov]

Hi, Can you do some careful removal of the 'spoil' at the edges by the walls? To make sure the cellar walls are full depth all the way round the room. In other words that the property is not built around a natural rock outcrop which would have been easier than removing. How old is the property so you can have an idea of the foundations it's likely to have?

Colin

 

[brightspark]

just make sure your founds are deep enough down and wont compromise your or neighbours property if it falls in or sinks u will be in for it

 

[johnik]

used to work in this line of buisness,you really need to do a trial pit next to the walls,get some "double shovels" and make a hole as small as poss,around 1 foot square is ideal,see how far your founds are down.a lot depends on what is under the soil.

 

[johnik]

http://mapapps.bgs.ac.uk/geologyofbritain/home.html

geo maps here,there could be some data from pits in your area if you are lucky.

 

[Badger1bear]

Hi, Can you do some careful removal of the 'spoil' at the edges by the walls? To make sure the cellar walls are full depth all the way round the room. In other words that the property is not built around a natural rock outcrop which would have been easier than removing. How old is the property so you can have an idea of the foundations it's likely to have?

Colin

The property was built around 1900 ( roughly seven O clock ) I was hoping the foundations would be good because the neighbours house had good foundations. I might invest in a Polish worker that I can point to the ground and say dig, obviously once the work was done I would release him back into the wild. Keeping them in captivity never worked out for AH

 

[Greys0n]

Yes you definitely need a permission. And It's better to consult with a lawyer. When I built shed the water from the roof dropped to neighbour garden and he sued me. So it's better safe than sorry.

 

[Kent]

I was working on a home were next door undermined his foundations and it bankrupted the builder. Not entirely the claim but next door was a barn and he shouldn't have dropped it to re- build under planning law but once the fire brigade were called the building inspector turned up

BTW digging with a guy down that far is very dangerous as regards cave in. Requires proper support and extra insurance cover commercially