crawlspace to basement convert and adding floors to home (roof, foundation, ceilings)

[Mandy612]

hi, im going to repost my question here because i think i may have put it in the wrong category b4.

i have a crawlspace right now and was wondering if it can be converted into a basement?
not just my crawlspace but also crawlspaces in general.is this a popular project?

also, what are the pros and cons of both a crawlspace and a basement?

i just want more room in my house.

i have a walk up attic but the ceilings are low. is it possible to make them higher to have more living space? or is popping roofs and adding floors unheard of? thanks

[chris410]

anything is possible, how big is your wallet?

[Mandy612]

lol money talks of course!..doesnt it always?! this is not something i would consider at the moment or in the near future, but i would like to know or just have an idea if it is possible and of course im sure these are pricey converts.

[harry chickpea]

There are some old threads on the subject of converting crawspaces. Do a search on those if you are really interested. Briefly, you either leave the foundation in place and carefully cut away, leaving enough soil to support it and then reinforcing the interior cuts, or you jack the house, cut away, and install a whole new foundation. The first option is less costly but adds less space than the second.

[Mandy612]

thanx harry chickpea, i will search the old threads.

[Barking Spider]

There was an article in Fine Homebuilding magazine a few years ago about this. It was in Seattle and cost a bundle to do it.

Foundation issues are the biggest hurdle, as well as egress concerns (depending on the lay of the land). The return on investment would probably be the drawback.

[Coldjensens]

We looked into doing this with one house. It needed foundation repair so we thought what the heck, lets just put in a basement.

However the foundation repari cost $4,500 and the basement woudl have cost $40,000 plus repairs to the interior of the house.

$4,500 won. The house is still on a crawlspace.

[Pruzhany]

Originally Posted by Mandy612

i have a crawlspace right now and was wondering if it can be converted into a basement?
...

In short, No for the area you live in. The footers for most homes are about two feet below the grade. Most homes in your area are built on cinder blocks and thus they are nowhere close to poured concrete with rebar like is done in the north. In theory you can raise the house, but I don't think any surrounding county will allow it due to the reason mentioned. I thought about it about a decade ago to add a floor to my house. The best quote I got just to reinforce the foundation was $14k by itself. The least expensive way was just to do an addition and purchase a large shed.

[richb]

I have a friend that made a crawlspace into a "basement". The foundation needed to be mostly replaced anyway, and the house had to be lifted up off of the old one anyway. It was a fairly deep crawlspace to begin with (a little over 4 feet). She basically made a one story ranch house on a crawl into a bi-level (raised ranch). The foundation wasn't made any deeper, but half walls were built on top of the new foundation and the house was left in a higher position and set on the new lower walls. A small bedroom was replaced on the main level with a staircase into the new lower level. But now the house has two more bedrooms, another bathroom and family room.

[cheapdad00]

Originally Posted by Mandy612

hi, im going to repost my question here because i think i may have put it in the wrong category b4.

i have a crawlspace right now and was wondering if it can be converted into a basement?
not just my crawlspace but also crawlspaces in general.is this a popular project?

also, what are the pros and cons of both a crawlspace and a basement?

i just want more room in my house.

i have a walk up attic but the ceilings are low. is it possible to make them higher to have more living space? or is popping roofs and adding floors unheard of? thanks

Might be less work to change the attic. ~25 yrs ago my parents ripped the roof off our 1 story house and put a new second floor on. Worked farily well except we lived in the house during construction and had a couple of bad rains when the roof was open which caused some leaks. Water flowing through a ceiling light fixture, where the light was on, is a very scary event.

Depending upon how tall the attic ceilings are, you can gain more space by putting a shed dormer on the back, cantilevering the new second floor a couple of feet over the back wall, beefing up the new floor joists to cary the load, etc. If the attic floor is really low, you can chop off the back of the roof, extend the front of the house rafters up to create suitable headroom and then she dormer the back. There is a weather risk when the roof is off the house, but other than that it is fairly straightfoward construction.