Building under your garden

[Gilly]

Has anyone done this?

Is anyone interested in doing this?

From what I can tell as long as it is not changing the way the garden looks and isn't joined onto the house there's no requirement for any kind of formal planning permission.

I have a large rear garden with sun room (it's an old self-build conservatory the previous owner built) and a patio with a large lawn beyond it and some more patio and raised garden beds beyond.

I was thinking along the lines of a build that was put on here before where two huge shipping containers had been joined and developed into the side of a hill. Then there's plenty of strength already there and it's a case of excavating a hole in the back garden, lowering some containers in, sticking some steps in the garden and bob's your uncle.

I don't know if that's feasible or what the attributed cost would be, but I can't see why it wouldn't be workable.

 

[Gilly]

Image of what I have now and what my head says could happen. Former on the left, latter on the right.

None of it drawn to scale

Because the sunroom is a flatpack POS there are no foundations, so I would be able to run from the patio just outside it as far as the boundary if I so chose.

 

[Gilly]

I was watching a police program on TV a while back and they raided a cannibas factory that was buried in a farmers field inside shipping containers...

LOL, I'm not building a grow-room

They catch you through your energy utilisation :shifty:

Sounds like a good idea! Would it affect any neighboring properties (or your own!) in terms of subsidence / drainage issues?

Subsidence I'm not sure of but I'd get a reputable firm to do the excavation and I doubt they'd get involved if they thought there were any dangers.

I've checked already and there are no utilities under the garden.

 

[Gilly]

I think you'd have to dig down, put the container in the hole, cover up with dirt & recover with grass. Trying to dig laterally below the lawn then slide a container in place would be prone to collapse. Otherwise, plan seems sound. Possible drainage issues.

Yeah, I'd have the hole excavated and then filled in around the container

http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/14hx0v/story_of_two_containers/

I remembered this from last year.

That's the one I was referring to

 

[Gilly]

Sounds interesting but I can't see you doing this without planning permission. Do you have neighbours at the side and back?

Yep, either side and at the back.

I would speak to the council first anyway, but if there's no lasting visibility of any substructure what problem could they have?

 

[Gilly]

I've contacted the council, will hopefully have the start of an idea as to whether it is feasible next week

 

[Gilly]

do it....

I want to build an underground home studio, kit it out with 100k worth of gear (OH IF ONLY).

make sure you take progress pics.

GOGOGOOG

The great thing about that is you don't need much sound proofing, because you've no-one to disturb

I can see them having concerns about subsidence/drainage and possibly about how you’re going to get the thing in and how you’re going to dig the hole because of access? It will be interesting to hear what the council say.

The drainage is a good point and something I'd need to speak to a specialist about.

I'd probably look at re-siting the garage with a long-term view to extending the house in future and therefore I'd take the garage down. It's only used for storage at the moment.

 

[Gilly]

I've thought about doing this before. Planned it out too!!

I'd have just dug a massive hole though and recreated the garden afterwards.

That's what I've said but you're not the first to think I was going to try leaving it.

Can't work out how I'm saying it wrong. Excavate = big hole in ground?

add daylighting to that as well since he's classing it as a habitable room according to his sketch.

How do you define habitable?

 

[Gilly]

Will there be internet in this mancave?

Of course!

 

[Gilly]

Great idea........ but could easily run to £10,000+

Of course it could.

You don't think it'd be worth it?

Imagine the condensation on the exposed steel

It'd be fully treated and there'd be a sump pump in there for runoff. Can't see a problem?

 

[Gilly]

How do you discover what depth the water table is? It wasn't mentioned in the searches for the property.

 

[Gilly]

Thanks

 

[Gilly]

you have a bore hole drilled, dont waste the bore hole either once done, search for ground heating online and have that put in the bore hole, then you get free heating for the life of the bore hole, would offset the cost that way as well

£9-17000 :/

 

[Gilly]

I got everything sorted with the council in terms of permission to build, not going too close to boundaries, etc. but this water table thing is a real sticking point. It's thousands to sink a bore hole and have someone tell you what depth the water table is at, and there's no record of anyone local having it done

Getting married next month so it's on a back burner for now (but not entirely gone).

 

[Gilly]

No the two companies I contacted about it were happy to remove the earth as part of the package.

 

[Gilly]

From speaking to people that have done similar work I think the container solution is out now, if I ever get to do it.

It'll more likely be a timber and concrete frame.

 

[Gilly]

It's still a part of what I'm looking at but the companies that I was talking about doing the work with would prefer to put concrete posts in.

Just a case of getting a lot of quotes and input and seeing what is most feasible.

 

[Gilly]

Would love to hear more on this, it does like a more typical build under ground might be easier/cheaper compared to the cost of buying and manipulating a few storage containers to your needs. You would have to deal with making it suitably weather proof but I cant help but think that a breeze block outer wall would be so much cheaper and you can be more flexible in the size of the room rather than using the fixed dimensions of the containers

If I owned the right place Id love to do this, build under the garden first with entrance steps close to the house then perhaps later build a conservatory that enclosed the entrance making it part of the house

There are a lot of additional considerations and planning (and therefore cost) associated with having the entrance within your home (or building within 2-3 metres of it, depending on who you believe).

 

[Gilly]

Have you went to building companies (i.e. bricks and mortar) as they will be more willing to push you to do something they are comfortable with rather than what is cheapest however out of their comfort zone.

KaHn

One of them was more into bricks and mortar but did others. The other was more specialised.

 

[Gilly]

I can see people not fully reading the thread