Land for building projects is scarce in cities; city residents and developers seeking to create
more living space have often already completed loft conversions and/or built extensions.
Despite local authorities recognising the need to create more residential space, many are
enforcing tighter planning laws particularly in conservation areas to prevent expanding
urbanisation, the ‘concreting’ of green space and visually unappealing extensions and
conversions.
Retro basements, beneath existing dwellings is an economically viable and eco-friendly
alternative that provides additional living space whilst minimising environmental impact.
Basements add value and living space to houses whilst being ‘planning friendly’, are
thermally and acoustically efficient, and do not upset neighbours by infringing on their
privacy or vistas.
However, mechanical diggers and other building machinery cannot always be used in small
spaces and under occupied buildings hence the building of retro basements is labour and time
intensive; dust, noise and access problems caused by the prolonged use of skips and lorries
causes traffic and pedestrian disruption.
We aim is to develop an innovative and pioneering solution to dramatically decrease the time
taken to build retro basements, minimise the disruption to both the householders and
neighbours and increase site safety.
The Excavator is a portable and hand operable spoil excavation and extraction system cutting,
extracting and removing spoil to depths in excess of 3 metres quickly and efficiently from site
to skip. This project will prove the possibility of using a geometric cutting head for rapid
excavation and an attached cyclonic or Archimedes screw for spoil extraction and removal.
The Excavator will be sufficiently manoeuvrable to circumnavigate subsurface pipes and
cables; future developments include automation or remote piloting and ‘add-on’ tooling.
Excavator fills a gap in the rapidly expanding retro basement building market.
This project