Underfloor crawl space conversion

[jonshutt2]

Hi.

My house has a underfloor cellar area, full height, concrete floor, about 2x2.5m in size. The rest of the house is just 'crawl space' but the section to the back is about 1.5m high, and I'm wondering if the access hole could safely be made bigger, then the dirt floor dug out (if possible) and some kind of flooring put in, so I could store things in there. It's totally dry, and about 40cm higher than the concrete cellar floor.

I'm thinking of converting the garage to be another room and utility room, so I'd be storing the kind of stuff the garage collects - random timber, ladders, paint tins, garden tools etc. The cellar area itself has water tank and that's where I store a couple of bikes.


Is this possible / tricky?

Thanks for any thoughts.

 

[Tigercubrider]

Some idea of the layout of the house would be good.
Don’t dig out unless you are sure that you are not undermining the foundations.
Once you go below the foundations, you can end up underpinning and that gets very expensive.

 

[freddiemercurystwin]

Why bother digging out if it already has 1.5m height, sure you have to bend down to move about but fine for storage, we had very similar in the last house.

 

[Koolpc]

I wouldnt dig it out. Just utilise what you have got.

 

[jonshutt2]

Thanks for the comments. I'm moving towards to just leaving it as is, and improving it. The existing access hole I'm guessing was cut out when the previous boiler was installed, and they'd already 95% cut the brick through from both sides two bricks lower, I guess they just decided they'd cut enough space, so I just knocked those bricks out.

I can put lighting in easy enough, and some shelves in on wall brackets, but if anyone has any ideas for improving the floor that'd be good. Would be nice not just be dirt, but also I don't want to mess up any air flow.

thanks