Who has done it? Sounds very expensive. Our house was built in 1910 and just has a cellar with dirt floor and limestone foundation. It needs help. The house was bought for 95k.

I have done it! We poured new footings inside of old foundation,and built block walls . we also slowly leveled the old house.

my grandpa used to do it all the time.

Lift the house with cribbing

remove old basement walls or foundation , dig new pour new footings , build new walls most of his were concrete block , then set the house down on the new walls. you can get a nice deep basment this way as you can nearly build your new walls to where you have the house lifted too.


for just stabilizing a lot can be done by pouring piers and supporting the house

also tuck pointing your existing walls.

pictures might help.

My dad used to put basements under houses and churches after ww2 . They did it how I have no idea because the structures never had a basement before

I've GC'd a few over the last 35 years. A few were pretty simple with cooperating grades and some were complete excavation jobs.

I don't know costs in NE, but from what I've done in WI, CO, and WY I would budget the following based on a flat lot:

Excavation $5,000-$7000

Stone $450/load -typical 14-18yrds per load - calculate 4-6" across and min 2' on backfill along walls

Setting cribs and hydraulic lift - 10-18K

Foundation/footings $90-125 /lnft

Slab $9-12/sqft

Mechanicals $4K per trade - Disconnects????

Carpentry - $3-5K - Build stairs, railing, common to replace old beams used as plates

If you want a GC to handle it all for you, add 15-20% plus any permits, engineering, and so on

Not a complete recap, but enough to get you in the right direction

Im no expert but seen some done by making the basement beside the old house then moving the house onto the finished basement.

We did it back in the 1980s. My uncle’s house, had just a four foot high basement. We ramped in from the outside with a cat driven machine, kinda like a low rider skid steer loader. We had the house blocked up, dug it out, and laid up new block walls. Worked good. Biggest trouble was getting the fumes from the loader out.