Moore & Sons is currently working on a foundation underpinning specialty project. Our customers wanted to increase their home’s original 7 feet ceiling height to 9 feet. And since we are modifying the ground level floor of the house, the only way we achieve a 2 feet of extra ceiling height is by digging down.

Original flooring before removal

This type of foundation underpinning is executed by a process called checker boarding. We first removed the original flooring in order to dig 2 feet deep envelope. There is no access for machines to get inside, thus all diggings are being done by hand! Approximately 20 tonnes of dirt was removed!

We then build and pour a small section of new concrete foundation, as well as any new required support structure, under one side of the original wall. Once the new concrete is cured, we then move on to the wall on the opposite side to build another small section of new foundation. The process is repeated for an adjacent wall until the entire room’s footprint rests on the new foundation envelope.

We have a limited space in this yard so our crew is doing it the old-fashioned way - hard manual work!