Services & rates
The work under the standing house
Old brick towns are short on lots and long on cellars — the cheapest square footage in the county is the floor you already own. The sheet below prices it the way we dig it: by the yard out, by the foot underpinned, with the shoring inside the number.
The deepening sheet · 2026
Basement deepening, bench and shore$46 / yd³ out
Down 2–3 ft under standing walls: benched sequences, screw-jack shores, spoils conveyed to the hopper
Bench-and-shore strip, inside lift$52 / yd³ out
Narrow access through a 32-in window or stair — conveyor out, aggregate in, compacted in lifts
Underpinning pits, sequenced$310 / lin ft
Excavated in alternating bays to the engineer’s drawing, filled with reinforced concrete, one drawing one bay
Egress window & well cutfrom $2,750 / unit
Saw-cut opening, well set, drain to stone, window to code — light where the coal used to live
Interior slab, new floor$6.80 / sq ft
Subgrade proof-rolled, stone base in two lifts, 98% Proctor under the pour
Rock floor, breaker day$168 / hr
Where the shale starts, hammer at the stated hourly — quoted before the chipping, never after
The house does not move on our watch
Every deepening runs to a stamped sequence when the walls want it, every bay is inspected before it is filled, and elevation marks on the party walls are read every morning before the crew goes down. Twenty-seven years, two hundred and forty deepened houses, zero cracked party walls that were not already cracked. That sentence is the whole company.
How a deepening goes
A metre down, in the right order
Visit 1
The cellar walk
Tape, compass and a damp meter: headroom, wall condition, the coal chute, the floor that has been settling since the mill closed. The sheet is filled in at the kitchen table and the sequencing question — engineer or not — is answered before we leave.
Before
Marks & protections
Elevation marks set on every wall, dust curtains hung, the conveyor path taped through the house, and the 811 ticket filed for the service laterals that always run closer than the drawing says.
Bays 1–3
The bench begins
The floor comes out in benched bays with screw-jack shores set to the tables — never the whole footprint at once. Spoils ride the conveyor to the hopper and the street sees a wheelbarrow’s worth at a time.
The edges
Underpin, bay by bay
Where the walls go deeper too, pits are dug in alternating sequence and filled the same day — one drawing, one bay, one inspection. The house is never standing over an open seam.
The floor
Base, proof, pour-ready
Subgrade proof-rolled, corrections stone-wrapped, aggregate base in two compacted lifts at 98 percent standard Proctor — handed to the concrete crew with the log and the marks unchanged.
The access
Small iron, long reach, no drama
Everything that enters a Whetstone cellar passes through a 32-inch window or the original stair: a compact excavator that breaks into four pieces, a conveyor in six-foot lengths, and a crew that has carried both down more stairs than they will admit. No crane on the street, no foundation wall opened to the weather, and the neighbour’s hydrangea survives — which in the brick towns is half the reference letter. Where even the compact refuses, the bays go to hand dig and the sheet says so up front, at the hand rate, not as a surprise.
2025 — 2026
Cellars we deepened
Six houses from the last two seasons, photographed at pour-ready or after the first furniture went down. The marks on the party walls read the same the day we left as the day we arrived.
We live in the attached half, which means their basement work happened under our party wall. I watched the marks on that wall every morning for a month — my father was a mason and I know what settling looks like. The marks never moved. When the conveyor came out and the stair was swept, I asked them for a card for our half.
The quiet record
Why the brick towns call us back
A deepening is the only excavation where the customer sleeps above the open hole. Everything that makes us careful — the benched bays, the daily marks, the sequence that never opens two bays beside each other — exists because the house cannot be moved out of the way of a mistake. It is slower than a scoop and it is the only way this work stays honest.
Interior digs run year round — the weather is somebody else’s problem · (555) 064-5520 · cellars@undercroftdigging.example
Three outfits told us to knock the house down and start over, and one told us to buy a bigger lot. Undercroft took 340 yards out through the coal window, deepened the whole floor, cut two egress wells, and handed the pour crew a base they said was flatter than new construction. The street never knew anything happened except a very tidy hopper by the curb for three weeks.
Before the conveyor comes in
Questions from the kitchen table
The four every deepening starts with, answered over coffee more times than we can count. If yours is not here, the cellar line runs seven to five and the voice on it has been under a party wall or two.
Can our house actually take a deeper basement?
Almost always, and the walk answers it: wall condition, the footing depth we find at a test hole, and whether the walls need underpinning or only the floor. Where the drawing matters, we say so on the first visit and bring the engineer we would use on our own house. What we never do is find out by starting.
How deep can you go under the walls?
Two to three feet is the common deepening with sequenced underpinning pits — alternating bays, each dug, inspected and filled with reinforced concrete before its neighbour opens. The sequence is the engineering; it is why the marks on the party wall are the most boring reading in the county.
What happens to the dirt — and the dust?
Spoils ride a conveyor in six-foot lengths to a sealed hopper at the curb, swapped by truck at dawn before the street wakes. Dust curtains seal the stair and the work zone, the path through the house is taped and floored, and the crew vacuums at the end of every shift. Your kitchen stays your kitchen.
Is it cheaper than an addition?
Usually — the walls and the roof already exist and the permitting is lighter. A deepened cellar with proper headroom, egress and a dry base routinely lands at half the per-foot cost of built addition space, and it never consumes the yard. The sheet lets you run both numbers yourself, which is how we would want it.
Winter is deepening season — the cellar does not care about frost · (555) 064-5520 · cellars@undercroftdigging.example
Measure the cellar while it is still empty
The address, the age of the house, and what the basement has to become — a rental, a workshop, a place the furnace stops embarrassing you. The walk is free, the sheet is filled in at the kitchen table, and the marks on the party walls are set before we leave. cellars@undercroftdigging.example