Small Crawl Space

Les in WA

I have a house built in 1947 and I can only crawl into about 1/4 of the crawl space because it is so close to the ground. How can I dig it out and make it bigger without lugging buckets in and out for the rest of my life? It's only a 1000 sq. ft. home. I can barely fit through the access hole and I am not that bit a guy.

ddawg16

Welcome to DIY Les.....

Well...the dirt has to go somewhere....either dig it out and toss to the side making trenches....or put it in a bucket and start filling up your trash can each week.

I have a bit more space under my house....but that is what I do. Each time I go down...I pull out a couple buckets of dirt and rock...especially rock....

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titanoman

Cut an access in a closet or somewhere.
Get some friends over and have a bucket brigade.

ratherbefishing

My neighbor's kids wanted a basement. He got something similar to this:
http://www.ezliftconveyors.com/
and put his kids to work.

joecaption

Lift the house or start digging. There are few choises.

Nailbags

lose weight? . Well you gave your self your own answer fill a five gallon bucket up and dump it out side. This is why for pennies more in cement you can have a 3 foot stem wall and then you have all the room you need. But in your problem its buckets O Fun! ugh

buster london

I dug out about a foot in depth of about 1000 sq ft of crawl space. Went from 1 foot deep to 2 foot deep. We have a partial basement. I got a small cart and would fill it with dirt, roll it to edge of basement, dumped into larger wooden box on wheels. We have outside stairs, built a ramp, pulled box up stairs with tractor and strap. We have a solid brick house, If I had a frame house on concrete block I think I would remove a few blocks and move dirt out that way. I only worked on it in winter, hot work! Took about 4 years. I also used a small jack hammer to loosen dirt. Lots of Luck!

CrawlSpaceMoist

unless you're ready to pay a crawl space company to come in and just do it for you (not in the DIY spirit, I believe) there's no way to really avoid the hard work.
small shovel, and instead of a bucket maybe one of those plastic pans like bus boys use in restaurants. tie a rope to it so you can drag it out.
You've got your work cut out for you.

Oh, I would not just dig tunnels and throw the dirt to the side. Most areas of the country the ground releases humidity and the closer you place dirt to the bottom of your floor system the higher the chances you'll have of more serious problems arising.

Hardway

Watch the movie the great escape!

jklingel

Are there any farmers, warehouses, etc, you could rent a conveyor belt from? Not ideal, but it would be much faster.