Building a Walkout Basement for Dummies

walkout basement

When it comes to truly major construction projects, the wise homeowner will naturally be inclined to turn the work over to a professional. Even if you think you might attempt to do it yourself, most of us will learn from a little in-depth research that such projects are usually too complex and require too many new skills to try on our own. Well, you'd learn if you didn't do your research at HomeSteady.com where, for instance, freelance contributor G. D. Palmer took a stab at explaining "How to Dig a Walkout Basement."

Palmer's qualifications for attempting this explanation consist of a BA in creative writing and studio art. We assume that's how she managed to get the definition of a walk-out basement (more or less) right:

"A walk-out basement, sometimes referred to as a daylight basement, is common in homes built into the slope of a hill. One side of the basement is sheltered by the ground but the other is open, with doors and windows like the rest of the house."

We're good with that, seeing that ANHQ has a walkout basement just like what G. D. described. It's the rest of Palmer's post that gave our nomination committee pause, however. She attempted to synthesize instructions from a forum post, a blog, and a video about digging a swimming pool. Here are some of the steps she suggested:

• "Stake out the area for the house. Place one stake at each corner of the future building. Connect the stakes along the perimeter of the house using twine..." – That's it? No survey, no transit, no calculation of the actual location of the corners projected to the flat plane of the basement???
• "Use excavating tools, such as a pick and shovel or a mini backhoe, to remove dirt to the depth appropriate for your walk-out basement. Use additional stakes and twine at the bottom of the excavation to ensure that the walls of the hole remain square." – Palmer got this from the video about digging a hole for a swimming pool...
• "...backfill the slope. Use any extra dirt removed from the basement excavation to increase the slope on shallow lots. This prevents the foundation from protruding too much on the upper side." – That one comes from the forum post. Do you really want to "increase the slope"? Or do you want to increase the relief - the difference between the upper and lower levels? Uh, yeah: that latter.
• And then, of course, there are the "tips," like "Digging out a basement under an existing house may require hand tools," and, "Never use any excavation machinery with which you feel uncomfortable. "

Yeah, we're gonna take the advice of some dimwit who's probably never dug a hole more that six inches deep in her life when it comes to excavating a basement. You know, the kind of Dumbass of the Day who'd say anything for her fifteen bucks!

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