In many old residential homes, unfinished basements in Vancouver only provide enough vertical room to access the foundation, making the lowering of basement floor levels an excellent renovation option for improving usable living space.

These shallow basement areas are not functional or legal to develop as living areas. If you want some extra indoor living space, lowering your home’s basement might be a great construction option that enhances your home’s comfort and functionality.

You can then legally develop your basement space and transform it into a fully usable living area.
Abarent Construction, a specialized foundation repair company, has more than 30 years of impressive professional experience in lowering basements and providing quality structural underpinning services across British Columbia, Alberta, and Saskatchewan.

Using our proprietary Engineered System, we have successfully performed basement lowering Vancouver construction projects, dropping basement floor surfaces as much as 36″ (91.44 cm) with excellent structural integrity results.

If you have a 5-6′ (1.52-1.82 m) ceiling height basement area, we can give you more vertical ceiling space and guarantee our work with a stamped engineer’s design and compliance letter.

Abarent uses two main construction techniques of lowering a basement: foundation benching and structural underpinning. Both involve structural changes to your foundation walls and concrete footings that will enable you to have more usable floor space and allow you to have the basement in Vancouver waterproofed, enhancing the overall property quality and market value of your home.

Both basement lowering construction techniques are worth considering depending on the scope of work you wish to have done in your basement area, the amount of new living space expansion you want to create, and your renovation budget, all while ensuring structural integrity.

There are pros and cons to any home improvement project. Here’s how to lower a basement floor level.

BASEMENT FLOOR LOWERING WITH BENCHING

Foundation benching is the more efficient and less expensive basement floor lowering method because it helps deal with some of the construction issues, project costs, and liability concerns that may occur if residential dwellings are close together. This makes it a very good option for many homeowners.
Foundation benching does not require lowering the foundation walls and concrete floor.
A concrete bench footing is constructed over a support slope below the foundation, providing a fast and effective structural support solution.
The concrete bench will be reinforced with steel rebars and integrated into the new basement floor surface. This reinforced concrete bench acts as a support strut to horizontally reinforce the bottom of the original footing and prevents it from sliding and collapsing.

BASEMENT FLOOR LOWERING WITH UNDERPINNING

Structural underpinning services require an interior excavation (usually from the interior of the basement) under the existing foundation floor and wall, a process that our underpinning contractors perform with great technical expertise.

We dig in short sequential sections, recommended by a structural engineer on our team, to get to the desired depth level. We then fill these sections with reinforced concrete and reinforce the new foundation base with a support cap, ensuring a comfortable, code-compliant, and sturdy result.

Evaluating Benching and Underpinning Options for Foundation Reinforcement

This underpinning process provides a new foundation floor surface and extends the walls of the basement area. We will need to conduct a thorough soil assessment of your property site, evaluate the proximity of other neighboring properties, and examine other underground infrastructure (plumbing pipes, electrical wiring, gas lines) to determine if this is the right option to pursue for your situation and renovation budget, always adhering to local building codes.

The bottom line is that foundation benching and structural underpinning are meant to provide foundation reinforcement, enhancing your home’s overall structural stability. Foundation benching will add less usable floor space to your basement, but it is better for smaller renovation budgets and the construction project doesn’t take as long. Structural underpinning will give you a lot more ceiling headroom and usable floor space and make your basement area ready for interior renovations, but it is more expensive, takes more construction time, and may require more effort and consent of your neighbors depending on the building codes and zoning bylaws in your area.

AbaVan Construction and Inspections Ltd.
#2506, 1033 Marinaside Crescent
Vancouver, BC
V6Z 3A3

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Phone: 1-604-260-2068
E-mail: info@abarent.net