We don’t have basements in CA. I did live in a house on a hillside though where the bottom floor was below grade on the hill side and open to the world on the other side. We had some problems with dampness and leaks (that I fixed by digging a 100’ up to 7’ deep trench by hand). It was nice down there in the summer when it was hot though (no AC in the house).
Seriously, y’all are fucking with me, right? “I wonder if living underground is a good idea” isn’t a thought that should take up even a moment of your time.
1 Like
Some of us are more in touch with our cave man roots than others.
Hobbits do it.
1 Like
While most people would say it isn’t as nice as my main level I love my basement. It’s completely finished and I have an office and nice TV setup down there along with my workout stuff. Sometimes I just want to be in a nice dark comfortable spot.
So note to any and all future home buyers:
If you look at a place and you like it but the back yard needs work, please make sure there is enough room around the sides of the house to allow digging/grading machines into the back yard. If there isn’t you’ll be paying a lot more for the contractor to do everything by hand.
That’s what helicopters are for.
That wouldn’t work either. We have a, shall we say, “challenging” back yard
We wanted to completely redo it, but it would probably cost over $75k to add terracing and other features to the hill, due to lack of access and prior work (before we owned it) being done poorly. I had a dream of a terraced hill with a cutout for a hot tub/water feature but that ain’t happening.
As it is, we’re adding drainage and pavers to the bottom area, which they still have to dig out by hand and cart out enough dirt so that the pavers are even with the existing patio. The drainage is essential because it floods every damned winter and we’ve been putting it off until we had enough money to cover at least half the cost.
1 Like
There are mini excavators and walk-behind loaders that are less than 4 feet wide. Taking all that down enough for pavers by hand is madness. Even with the most exploited day labor doing the work it’d still be hugely more cost effective to rent some equipment.
The wall is staying. It’s just the dirt area getting paver-ed.
Those things you posted would not fit beside our house unless we took down the side gate and portion of fence (that looks like the fence pictured). The far side you can see is only about 3 ft wide without removing trees.
Even then it might not fit around from the driveway to the side.
of course now I’m debating having them continue at all, because we might just have to run for the hills when this country turns into the Handmaid’s Tale in a couple months.
Burn it down, take the insurance $ and go buy a trailer next to Johnny.
3 Likes
lol
I think it’s pretty standard to tear down a couple sections of fence to let equipment back. They put it back when done. Certainly less expensive than doing that by hand.
1 Like
Dunno if this helps, but I just had a shower pan hot mopped and it cost $400 and change.
2 Likes
I’m just the general contractor on the job, wtf do I know?
It’s a new shower. Hopefully you won’t need to take it this far.
I’ve mentioned how I got sorta roped into being a bathroom remodeler. This is the second bath for the same customer we’re doing. (The first had a tub) I will note that the customer is fully aware that I don’t really know shit about remodeling bathrooms.
1 Like
I have never seen that done and have no idea why somebody would do it that way. Standard is a one piece vinyl shower pan liner. New hotness is a Schluter shower tray. Hot mopping is for roofs.
Oh, and @JohnnyTruant yeah, call a plumber and prepare for a hole in the garage ceiling. It’s probably the trap.
eta: unless you have access through a panel in a closet or something, in which case you can try to tighten everything up by hand, fail, and then call a plumber to make a hole in your garage ceiling.
I’d start as close to the drain as I can figure with a hole just big enough to see what’s going on, then proceed from there.
1 Like
Hot mop is very common here. I’ve seen it in new construction that I’ve been working on several times. The people I’m working with who have done tons of bathrooms always have hot mop done. And I called a large hot mop company that does hot mops all over the place. There are so many hot mops that this company has lots of crews out doing nothing but hot mops so often that it was hard to get on their hot mop schedule. Hot mop.
1 Like