Digging out floor in very old house.....

[pugwash4x4]

Hi All,

We live in an semi detached house/cottage/mess/moneypit.....bought 3 years ago from an owner that lived there 65 years...and we're now finding out had an aversion to maintenance lol

The front half of the house is, we believe, from the 1820s, it has (under all the old layers of carpet) a red tile floor laid straight onto soil! Under the soil is clay (a lot of clay)

The floor is very uneven and leaches damp and dirt upwards.

So i'd like to replace it all!

If we take 200mm out of the floor to replace with 100mm gravel, DPM, 50mm insulation, underfloor heating and a 50mm screed, is there any chance we could cause a problem with the foundations which i suspect are particularly shallow!

 

[Tigercubrider]

I suspect that a 1820's house won't have foundations.

 

[pugwash4x4]

Perhaps foundations was the wrong word- we're expecting to dig down and find a "footpad" of bricks that the brick walls sit on- probably only 200mm deep!

 

[JohnD]

Footings

The usual method is not to dig out the whole floor in one go, but to excavate beside the wall in small bays, filling each with concrete to stabilise that part of the wall, before moving on to another (not adjacent). When you have gone round the perimeter, you can dig out the middle.

 

[^woody^]

If we take 200mm out of the floor to replace with 100mm gravel, DPM, 50mm insulation, underfloor heating and a 50mm screed, is there any chance we could cause a problem with the foundations which i suspect are particularly shallow!

That could cause a problem with it not actually being a floor!