I have a habitable basement with various rooms in a 1900s semi. I am enlarging into other available basement rooms and refurbishing the existing ones as the concrete floor has failed and no adequate tanking was done on most walls resulting in damp. Building control approval is under way. I would like to achieve 2400 floor to ceiling height and have carefully excavated to find that the house has a 2 course brick footing with no concrete foundation. The existing concrete slab sits on soil only. The soil is at the height of the top of the first footing course and I would like to reduce the soil level to the bottom of the first course to allow for correct compacted hardcore layer etc without loosing height. I feel that I am not undermining the foundations at this level but any more depth would be unsafe. Does anyone have an opinion if I could do this? The alternative might be a load of underpinning for the sake of 100ml of headroom.
Thanks
