Lowering the floor in the back gîte

One of the major jobs in the future back gite Les Oiseau, which as a reminder will be for disabled (PMR) guests, is to lower the floor level where the back bedroom and bathroom will be. This was previously a storage room for the lawn mower and trailer, which they unfortunately took with them.



Original floor level



Once they had moved out and we had cleared the room of all the rubbish, we could see that we needed to lower the floor by 20-30cm if we were to end up with a ceiling of 220cm (the regulation minimum). The old stone wall on the outer side was also in a poor shape and we needed to underpin the wall and provide solid foundations. This and lowering the floor was the first jobs in here. Lowering the floor we had to do by hand as we could not get a digger into the room through the double gates, there was not enough clearance even for the smallest machine.

 Our method was to dig down but keeping 30cm or so away from the stone wall. We then underpinned sections of 2-3 at a time to avoid risking any structural problems if we dug it in one go.





The underpinning would be not visible later as the slab would cover it (just).


As we brought the floor lower we started to encounter bed rock, some was flaky and not too difficult for a crowbar and pickaxe but some was sold stone. With the jack hammer as well 


 While working on the back corner (too dark to easily see), we removed a piece of loose concrete in the wall and came across this little guy hibernating. We relocated him to an adjacent barn and did our best to protect him (or her) from being disturbed (or worse). We're still not sure what it was but it looked like a small squirrel or possibly a door mouse. 


Once we had removed the breeze block wall from the adjoining room, the concrete floor by the staircase to the games room upstairs became the default slab level for the rest of the floor. Using a self-levelling laser, we then raised the future slab level by 7cm so we could layer insulation into this room and the next room, which is regulation.


Another tool recommendation here for the self-levelling 3D laser, the DeWalt DW089K, together with a tripod and detector for outside/bright light. This is an amazing tool for this type of work with incredible accuracy (+/-0.3 mm/m). The self-levelling feature makes life so much easier and quick. Again the DeWalt brand is not cheap (as for the tile saw) but they are the best and heavy construction class build.

This room is finished as much as we can for now as we can't get any building supplies, but there are plenty of other jobs to keep us busy!

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