Excavating for a Walkout Basement
Hello everyone! I’m Caleb Dansie with Dansie Design Build. Today, we’re excavating for a walkout basement entry in Riverton, Utah. I wanted to show you what’s going on at the job site. If you need help building a basement walkout entry, drawing plans, or remodeling your home, you can reach out to us. So let’s jump right in and take a peek.
What We've Done So Far
We are in the backyard and have the window well on the existing window. We previously installed the reinforcement for the header we also need, which you can see above the window.
What We're Doing Now
Now, we’re in the process of digging the dirt out. There’s a sprinkler line in the way, though, so that will be removed. Then, the foundation wall will sit down in this area over here. The footing will be at the bottom while the foundation goes on top. But for now, we’re just getting this window well taken out here and getting that out of the way.
What We Do With Excavated Dirt
From here, we are building a pile of growing dirt as we start digging a walkout basement, and then we will need to get some of it out of the job site. We shuttle that to the street and into the trailer. We will leave the rest of the soil here in a pile to backfill with it. After that, we get the foundation poured and then wait about a week to put the dirt back on the outside of the foundation wall.
Critical Information Before Digging Up Backyard
One important thing to do before excavating the backyard is to get the underground utilities located. We take care of that at the beginning of the design, especially when we’re getting ready to plan where the walkout basement excavation starts. We’ll need to know the underground utility locations early to avoid putting a walkout somewhere where there’s a power line, a gas line, a phone line, or something that will incur an additional expense to relocate. So we design the project to be installed in a different area of the home without digging into backyard utilities.
Let me show you how those utilities look when they are located so you can understand what’s happening with those underground utility markers.
How We Mark Underground Utilities
In the house’s front yard, you can see that the workers have marked around the water meter with some blue paint and these blue flags. These underground utility color codes indicate where the water is and where it’s going. The yellow is the gas lines, so we can see that we have one there and that it cuts across under that tree and then comes back to the actual gas meter. And we also have the power that’s coming here from this outdoor utility box. So it goes to the neighbor’s house and branches off at the same box to go straight over to the place we are working at.
Now, you can see here where all the utilities are. As we get back here, you can see that we marked the fence post locations. These are technically not utilities, but when we finish excavating for a basement, we can replace the fence post and know where those posts used to be. Besides that and the sprinkler line, there are no markings in the back of the home, so we’re good to go.
Let Us Know How We Can Help You
Do you need help planning a basement walkout entry and figuring out how that will fit on your property? Are you looking for help with designs and building the project? You can contact us to request a project consultation, and we will get back to you. Thanks for your time today, and have a great week.
