Basement Finishing Project Update
Good Morning. Today I want to give a project update on the progress of our basement project in Herriman. It’s all ready for insulation today. I want to show you the framing, electrical, HVAC, some load bearing walls that we removed, which were replaced with a steel beam, and another load bearing wall that was removed and replaced with a wood wall. Let’s take a look.
Basement Apartment Kitchen
This area, which was previously finished, will have a new kitchen. It will be an 11 by 12 foot full kitchen with a dishwasher, fridge, stove, microwave above the stove, and an island. We have some quartz countertops coming for this as well as some pendant lighting above the island. The island is stubbed out here with the conduit and the electrical line. We cut out a strip of concrete and put in this conduit, with wiring, and poured that back.
Living Room Floor Plan
We’re going to cut out that window and replace it with a door and sidelight for access to this basement apartment area. So from the entry door, the kitchen is on the right, with the island, and then moving this way, they’ll have a nice living room area here. We framed in some backing for a TV option on the wall. If they want to mount a TV there, the wall will have plenty of support. We also put in an electrical box over here, in case they want to put a TV on that wall. So they have some options later for whatever they want to do. We call this wall a party wall. It basically separates the owners from the tenants. We have a 5-1/2 inch, 2×6 bottom plate that we framed with 2×4’s that alternate from one side to the other. This allows any sound that travels through any 2×4 to stop at the insulation inside of the wall. These alternating studs help with privacy and keep the sound on each side of the wall, where it should be.
We added plenty of mechanical and relocated the HVAC ductwork, and the condensers outside will be moved. Right now, we’ve cut plenty of holes in the ceiling, and those holes will be patched.
The Owner’s Section
Moving on into this area, we have the staircase to the owner’s home upstairs right here. This space is the owner’s portion of the basement and remains connected to the main home. We’re going to install cabinets on this wall. We created a mechanical room over here to house the water heater, water softener, a couple furnaces, and an electrical panel. We’re going to install a little bit of drywall in there, but it will remain pretty much unfinished.
Engineered Open Concept for Basement Load Bearing Wall Relocation
This is really an open concept basement. There were a couple load-bearing walls that were important to these owners to move so that we could create a large living area down here. One of the load-bearing walls came from this corner, this way clear across the room. The other wall was started here and went back to the end of the room there. This room was much smaller before. The engineering to remove these walls was pretty time-consuming to calculate what was going to happen, but essentially with the load of this wall here, we had to install a steel beam. This is a 3×3 inch steel column. This column goes up and connects above to another steel beam at this bolted connection here. We had to use a bolted connection because the beam is so long, we can’t fit it up into this hole without splicing it in the middle.
The beam comes all the way over and terminates on this side where we have another column coming down to the floor. Both of these columns are grouted in place underneath. We used structural non-shrink grout to keep it bolted down and epoxied in place. The bolted connection above here is where we connected those two beams together. It was a fun little detail that we engineered and put together. So that wall is now safely removed and that 16 foot beam is now taking the weight of the house so that this room can be nice and open.
New Concrete Footing
On this wall here, the engineer told us that the calculations allow us to move the wall four feet over from here. These TJIs can hold the weight above even after moving the wall. This was a significant save not having to install another beam because that beam is 22 feet long, and it gets difficult to bring in and install really long beams into basements. Since we moved this bearing wall, we had to cut out the floor, because it was just a standard four inch slab, jackhammer the concrete, haul out the rubbish, and then dig down another foot to pour a thickened concrete footing with rebar. We now have a structural footing foundation below that wall. So that is how we moved those two walls out of this space.
Cold Storage Room
This room here is going to be used as a storage room. Bedrooms require certain window sizes for egress, and since we cannot install a window due to the garage location on this wall and the front porch on this wall, the owners have elected to make this a storage room as an extension of their cold storage under the porch. We’re going to insulate the ceiling and then the walls. This wall will be well insulated as well as this one to keep it cool in this room. We left out any of the HVAC supply heat runs to this room, so it will remain a lot cooler in there.
Basement Bathroom
Here we have a five-foot wide bathroom with a fiberglass tub that has a swoop on the side of it. The toilet drain and supply line are right there. The sink is here with a 60 inch vanity and mirrors on the wall. We installed an extra large exhaust fan because this is the front wall of the home. We didn’t want to vent out the front of the house, because that just doesn’t look good, so we ran the vent ducting to the back of the house, which is a lot farther away. Because the back of the house is so far away, and there are so many 90 degree turns, we had to install a six-inch pipe and upgrade this to a larger unit, which has the power to push air through that distance and amount of turns. We also have an electric heater that will come into here.
Standard Basement Bedroom
Now this is a standard bedroom here. We have a window and window well. That’s the closet. This closet will have about five shelves on all three walls that run two feet deep. There’s going to be quite a bit of storage space in here, which is also what these owners were really looking to do with this basement, that is create as much storage space as possible. Other than that, it’s pretty much a standard basement which will be insulated very well.
Mechanical Units for Heating and Cooling
Back here in the main living room, we have the third mechanical unit to produce the heating and cooling. This unit runs the whole basement, and these two over here run the upstairs. We zoned them separately. This allows you to have one temperature for the basement and another temperature for the upstairs, which run on separate thermostats.
Herriman, Utah Basement Finishing
That is our little tour of the basement and the progress that we’ve made. I hope you guys enjoyed it. If you want to learn more about basement finishes, our process, and how we take a basement pretty much from concrete flooring and walls to completely finished so that it feels like it’s not a basement, you can look at our website: www.dansiedesginbuild.com and check us out, we’d love to hear from you. Thanks. Have a wonderful rest of your day.
