Upper Lesson street – Dublin 2

 

Type of House: A Mid Terrace Georgian residential building.  This three story over basement was being completely refurbished to restore it to its former glory after many years as student accommodation.

In this house the existing basement only spanned under the front part of the house and was more accurately described as a cellar as it could be not be used as habitable space.  Briefly put it was a 33 m2 cellar with a history of flooding.  Our job was to convert this cellar into useable rooms and to extend the basement underneath the remainder of the building which amounted to an additional 22 m2 of living space.

The construction phase lasted 9 weeks and required 19 12 cubic yard skips and 16 meters of underpining to the existing foundations down to a depth of 1.5 metres.  Because there had been problems previously with other basement projects in this terrace, a full dilapidation survey was completed and updated throughout the project.  A dilapidation survey maps the exact status of a building before during and after construction to see exactly what changes occur if any during construction. We are proud to report that ours was the only project to suceed and not have any adverse effect on the neighbouring houses.   

To combat the flooding problem we constructed a filtration layer, underneath the concrete floor slab, which drains to a sump with duel pumps.  In this way any flood water will be quickly pumped from the site before penetrating the living spaces. 

At the conclusion of this project, the householder had four floors where there were three and a cellar.  The client then went on to use part of the basement to install a high specification ventilation system and heating system.  In the remaining larger part of the basements which had good light we built a self contained flat, which was going to be used for an Au pair but could in time be a “granny flat” or a source of rental income. 

All pictures in this case study are from the specified project.

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