Stepped Buttresses for a Row House Basement

This winter and spring, JLC will be following a gut-renovation and Passive House deep energy retrofit carried out on a typical Brooklyn, New York brick row house. Here’s our first look at the job, starting not with the energy details, but with the foundation work. Thousands of historic homes in New York City were built shoulder to shoulder along city blocks, sharing common rubblestone basement foundation walls, along with shared brick or stone party walls that support floor and roof framing. When one of those basements is deepened, the city requires underpinning, or some equivalent solution, to support adjacent structures. In this photo series from contractor Jose Maldonado and Passive House consultant Cramer Silkworth, we see the steps involved in shoring and buttressing an existing row house foundation so that the basement floor can be lowered.