A discovery I made in the basement of my cottage.

Having a private house is a good idea. But the idea of a house with cellar is better.

Recently I purchased an unfinished cottage. It has a roof, interior walls are plastered, but entrance door, which is 1.5 m above the gound, has no access. Original plans are not available. Obviously, there must have been some plan with building extra steps to the door.

A piece of wall, made out of the three 2200x440x600 mm reinforced concrete blocks seemed to serve as an abutment for the staircase, but the top of the wall was 300 mm higher than the floor level at the entrance door.

Displacement of the three 1.2-ton blocks is a part of another story.

What is even more disappointing, the house has no cellar. The height of the foundation wall can provide only 1.8 m high cellar ceiling has the foundation pit been dug inside the building -- in the hall. The better solution was to plan the cellar outside the house, but adjoining the wall, the underground part with the lowest 1 and highest 1.8 m depth and exta 0.6 to 1.2 m above the ground. So that the hight difference between the cellar floor and ceiling could be 2.2 m, which is acceptable.

But which of the building's sides is to be adjoined the cellar with? Of course, the one at the entrance door with the overhead cover (reinforced conctere slab) of the cellar to be used as landing of the stairs up the entrance level, thus " killing two birds with one stone".

There was no room for a digging machine, so I dug the foundation pit using shovel, spade, crowbar and a wheel barrow for dumping the earth.

I made a mind blowing discovery: there was no basement below the door. Just a reinforced concrete block resting on the foundarion wall at it's corners.

Conclusion.

Never trust construction contractors. They are building someone else's house, not their own one. You are the very "someone else" for them. They will surely make a fool of you immediately after the moment you leave them out of the centre of your attention.

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