Do cellars add value to a house?
Discussion
Reading some old documents on my house yesterday seem to confirm my suspicions that my old house (built pre 1800) once had a cellar and coal storage area up until the 1980's under the dining room and possibly extending undeer my office. I was wondering how much value (if any) it might add to open it up again and how much work that might entail? Bit of infor and some calculations;
When we moved in about 5 years ago we quickly had it decorated and new carpets put down and the previous ownwer had died, and so had the owner before that so nobody to ask. I noticed that the floor boards in the corner of the dining room were new looking compared to the rest of the room and later a neighbour gave me the conversion plans which showed that there had been a staircase in that corner under which I suspect was the most obvious entrance to any cellars.
My insurance company have paid up to strip the plaster off the wall and deal with the damp on the back wall by tanking (we had a flood through the wall behind) which will mean emptying the room and taking up the carpets and redecorating. When I put a new rteiator in this summer I took up a floorboard and it looks like the cellars have been filled with sand (and probably rubble underneath). It would obviously have to be emptied by hand but there may still be stone steps to help in the access (were stone setps common at that time as the house over the read has stone steps and was built about the same time (1755)).
Calculations:
If the cellars take up both the dining room and the room alongside it it would be an area about 16 feet by 20 feet, and if they are say 6 feet deep that is about 71 cubic yards (16x20x6=1920 cubic feet /27cubic feet per yard), so 7 x 10 yard skips ( so about £1.5K). How long would that take to take out by hand? I would alos need to tank the 432 square feet of underground walls walls ( 2 walls 6 feet high x 16 feet and 2 walls 6 feet high by 20 feet) which is another £3k I expect.
I can only see it being used as a wine cellar or storage facility so would all that work be worth it?
However, if I didn't tank it I am thinking that doing this digging out would give me somewhere for any future flood water to hit first ( a sort of sump) would help reduce the risk to the main house if I installed a pump in the cellar on a float switch?
When we moved in about 5 years ago we quickly had it decorated and new carpets put down and the previous ownwer had died, and so had the owner before that so nobody to ask. I noticed that the floor boards in the corner of the dining room were new looking compared to the rest of the room and later a neighbour gave me the conversion plans which showed that there had been a staircase in that corner under which I suspect was the most obvious entrance to any cellars.
My insurance company have paid up to strip the plaster off the wall and deal with the damp on the back wall by tanking (we had a flood through the wall behind) which will mean emptying the room and taking up the carpets and redecorating. When I put a new rteiator in this summer I took up a floorboard and it looks like the cellars have been filled with sand (and probably rubble underneath). It would obviously have to be emptied by hand but there may still be stone steps to help in the access (were stone setps common at that time as the house over the read has stone steps and was built about the same time (1755)).
Calculations:
If the cellars take up both the dining room and the room alongside it it would be an area about 16 feet by 20 feet, and if they are say 6 feet deep that is about 71 cubic yards (16x20x6=1920 cubic feet /27cubic feet per yard), so 7 x 10 yard skips ( so about £1.5K). How long would that take to take out by hand? I would alos need to tank the 432 square feet of underground walls walls ( 2 walls 6 feet high x 16 feet and 2 walls 6 feet high by 20 feet) which is another £3k I expect.
I can only see it being used as a wine cellar or storage facility so would all that work be worth it?
However, if I didn't tank it I am thinking that doing this digging out would give me somewhere for any future flood water to hit first ( a sort of sump) would help reduce the risk to the main house if I installed a pump in the cellar on a float switch?
Edited by Brown and Boris on Sunday 28th December 14:42
Edited by Brown and Boris on Sunday 28th December 14:43
daveBrown and Boris said:
I can only see it being used as a wine cellar or storage facility so would all that work be worth it?
However, if I didn't tank it I am thinking that doing this digging out would give me somewhere for any future flood water to hit first ( a sort of sump) would help reduce the risk to the main house if I installed a pump in the cellar on a float switch?
It would be a fookin' expensive wine cellar; I hope you have some really expensive plonk to put in it! And, if it is full of rubble and sand, it already is an effective sump for any flooding. I'd not expect stone steps, either, TBH.However, if I didn't tank it I am thinking that doing this digging out would give me somewhere for any future flood water to hit first ( a sort of sump) would help reduce the risk to the main house if I installed a pump in the cellar on a float switch?
I'd certainly want to investigate, and maybe the space would be useful. But I'd drop any ideas about it paying for itself in any way!
Cost you Alot more then £5,000 to make a nice decent waterproof space.
Also and say if you take out 10tons, once excavated that could = 15 tons so it could cost you alot to get rid of it.
It won't even have a concrete over site for you to build off.
As it was built in 1755 do you think it will have a good head height? i'd suspect around 5 foot, so then you would have to dig it out and most proberly underpin the walls.
Waste of time imho, only any good if you are doing a new build then you can incorperate it.
Also and say if you take out 10tons, once excavated that could = 15 tons so it could cost you alot to get rid of it.
It won't even have a concrete over site for you to build off.
As it was built in 1755 do you think it will have a good head height? i'd suspect around 5 foot, so then you would have to dig it out and most proberly underpin the walls.
Waste of time imho, only any good if you are doing a new build then you can incorperate it.
Might be good to speak to owners of neigbouring, similar properties if there are any... If they have kept the cellar it would give you a good idea of the dimensions to expect, to work out whether it's worth doing. I'd love to do it, definitely, but any of this major underground structural work would put me off big time.
I've got an old cellar and have just finished sorting out the drainage to stop it from flooding. Next stage is to tank it out. The question you should be asking yourself is: so why did they fill the cellar in? After all, why make your house smaller for no good reason?
My cellar had 6' of water in it last summer... and one of the options I considered was to simply fill the bloody thing in - end of problem! Once I'd done some investigation I realised that the Victorians knew a thing or two about engineering and the cellar was certainly not wet when the house was new. The problem was that the original victorian land drains had failed (including the ones that drained the cellar foundations). After digging several big holes in my garden and jetting a lot of pipes everything was back to its original state - and now my cellar does not flood. I'm going to line the cellar using a modern membrane and channel the damp to a sump and pump it away (I'm planning for a worse case scenario of a repeat of the floods of 2007). This will result in a dry room which will then be used for storage. The material cost to make the room dry and install a pump etc. is about £1.5k (25' x 15' area). I was quoted £10k for the same job by a specialist cellar conversion company - but its not too difficult to tank the room yourself. Here's a link to all you need: http://www.hobuk.co.uk/acatalog/Oldroyd_Xv.html
One final thing... have you got a well? (if you think not, double check). If so there's a good chance that the cellar will drain in to it. Most of my problems stemmed from a well with a blocked overflow and this resulted in excessive ground water around the house and a cellar that would rapidly flood after a major storm.
My cellar had 6' of water in it last summer... and one of the options I considered was to simply fill the bloody thing in - end of problem! Once I'd done some investigation I realised that the Victorians knew a thing or two about engineering and the cellar was certainly not wet when the house was new. The problem was that the original victorian land drains had failed (including the ones that drained the cellar foundations). After digging several big holes in my garden and jetting a lot of pipes everything was back to its original state - and now my cellar does not flood. I'm going to line the cellar using a modern membrane and channel the damp to a sump and pump it away (I'm planning for a worse case scenario of a repeat of the floods of 2007). This will result in a dry room which will then be used for storage. The material cost to make the room dry and install a pump etc. is about £1.5k (25' x 15' area). I was quoted £10k for the same job by a specialist cellar conversion company - but its not too difficult to tank the room yourself. Here's a link to all you need: http://www.hobuk.co.uk/acatalog/Oldroyd_Xv.html
One final thing... have you got a well? (if you think not, double check). If so there's a good chance that the cellar will drain in to it. Most of my problems stemmed from a well with a blocked overflow and this resulted in excessive ground water around the house and a cellar that would rapidly flood after a major storm.
Carreauchompeur said:
Might be good to speak to owners of neigbouring, similar properties if there are any... If they have kept the cellar it would give you a good idea of the dimensions to expect, to work out whether it's worth doing. I'd love to do it, definitely, but any of this major underground structural work would put me off big time.
The house over the road has a much deeper cellar ( 8 feet plus) as is the one just down the road. One has steps and one a ladder to access them. Both are wet especially when it rains (one guy took out 1 foot of sludge last year). The other one has a stone gulley in the floor which runs away into a network of stone gulleys. A local farmer was telling me he found an entire network of these stone gulleys with stone covers on his land, all gushing water at an incredible rate. One of these gulleys is our problem as it can't cope when the weather is poor and overflows into the surrounding land which is above the level of my lounge. I have an invice somewhere for the taking in the luinge which si guranteed up to about 120 feet of water pressure, so I can get a price fro the celar. It is moving 15 tonnes of sand and rubble by hand that bothers me.Brown and Boris said:
7 x 10 yard skips ( so about £1.5K).
Well if you didn't mind a slightly higher garden you could save £1500... 
Autonotiv said:
Also and say if you take out 10tons, once excavated that could = 15 tons
I'm intrigued to know where the extra 5 tons come from! (I think you mean volume not weight)Brown and Boris said:
...One of these gulleys is our problem as it can't cope when the weather is poor and overflows into the surrounding land which is above the level of my lounge. I have an invice somewhere for the taking in the luinge which si guranteed up to about 120 feet of water pressure, so I can get a price fro the celar. It is moving 15 tonnes of sand and rubble by hand that bothers me.
Get the gulley jetted... We cleared 200m of old victorian drains with jets. Before we did this after heavy rain storm water would travel *up* the drains and back in to the cellar! We had 150 years worth of sludge in the drains and a couple of sections had collapsed (which are easy to repair). When your drainage system was originally installed it would have coped with all weathers. Clear your drains before spending anything on tanking or damp prevention - fix the cause not the symptoms. Our drains are between 6' and 9' in depth and apart from one very scary hole to fix a section outside the house everything else was done from the surface. We also mapped all the drainage runs with a transponder so now I know where all the water goes.If there is a cellar containing 10 or 15 tons of sand then someone must have hauled that lot in. Unless you had all that material to get rid of, you might seal off a cellar. But would you lug that lot in without a very good reason?
I have known builders dump the material from a flat conversion job down a cellar, and then build a staircase on top of the old access. But that looked like a load of junk in a hole, not sand.
Cellars often didn’t go right under the house, either full width or depth. It may be just under part of it. Most likely would be from the front step and coal hole, back along the centre of the house.
Look for traces of a coal hole, especially if there isn’t access to the rear of the property for coal to be taken to a coal bunker at the rear of the property.
What you may be seeing is the ground to the side of the cellar.
I have known builders dump the material from a flat conversion job down a cellar, and then build a staircase on top of the old access. But that looked like a load of junk in a hole, not sand.
Cellars often didn’t go right under the house, either full width or depth. It may be just under part of it. Most likely would be from the front step and coal hole, back along the centre of the house.
Look for traces of a coal hole, especially if there isn’t access to the rear of the property for coal to be taken to a coal bunker at the rear of the property.
What you may be seeing is the ground to the side of the cellar.
In our last house we had a cellar under the kitchen which we renovated and my husband extended it under the lounge. The house was built in 1868 and had a well where water drained into it. We were lucky because the house was on a hill so would never flood. We had stairs going from the lounge (like a cupboard under the main stairs) down to the cellar. The stairs were brick built with oak treads but your house is much earlier than our one so the stairs could be stone. We had a coal shute just outside our kitchen door as well.
We dug out about 100 tons of ballast by hand with the help of a conveyor belt that went into a tipper lorry. The Council originally said we only needed Building Regulations and then they decided we needed planning permission. We underpinned the house and had to submit stress calculations.
We dug out about 100 tons of ballast by hand with the help of a conveyor belt that went into a tipper lorry. The Council originally said we only needed Building Regulations and then they decided we needed planning permission. We underpinned the house and had to submit stress calculations.
bossgriff said:
In our last house we had a cellar under the kitchen which we renovated and my husband extended it under the lounge. The house was built in 1868 and had a well where water drained into it. We were lucky because the house was on a hill so would never flood. We had stairs going from the lounge (like a cupboard under the main stairs) down to the cellar. The stairs were brick built with oak treads but your house is much earlier than our one so the stairs could be stone. We had a coal shute just outside our kitchen door as well.
We dug out about 100 tons of ballast by hand with the help of a conveyor belt that went into a tipper lorry. The Council originally said we only needed Building Regulations and then they decided we needed planning permission. We underpinned the house and had to submit stress calculations.
Souins like hard work but you were creating new space right? I wouldn't want to do anthing other than remove the sand etc from the existing cellar(s)We dug out about 100 tons of ballast by hand with the help of a conveyor belt that went into a tipper lorry. The Council originally said we only needed Building Regulations and then they decided we needed planning permission. We underpinned the house and had to submit stress calculations.
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