I recently found your show on the drive home from work and love it! My family's growing, so I'm looking to make my basement a more usable space. The problem is the basement floor: It is poured concrete, but has a lot of rise and fall (from the basement floor to the main floor joists is a range of 98 inches to 107 inches). What do you suggest for making it level (fabricating floor joists to sit on the concrete with subfloor on top, pouring additional concrete on top of current material, etc)? I am, frankly, looking for the most economical and easiest fix. We are also looking to keep as much of the ceiling height as possible, so we want to build the floor up as little as possible. Any help with this daunting task would be greatly appreciated.
Our Answer
Leveling a concrete basement floor by any means will cost you dearly in ceiling height, especially since we're talking about a floor with a height range of nine inches! I'm not sure why your floor is in the condition it's in, but the best solution might be tear it out and pour a new floor that's level. Basement floors usually are not part of a home's structure – they're essentially there to cover the dirt below. You can take up that existing floor with a jackhammer. However, have the structure evaluated beforehand to make sure there isn't something underneath that will cause a new floor to be similarly uneven.
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