House in Słubice — precast basement, slabs and walls

A precast house over a full basement in Słubice, on a sandy plot beside a pine wood. Below the ground floor there is a complete basement storey with a drive-in garage. Our scope began below ground level: precast concrete basement walls and the floor slab over them, and only on that finished slab did the ground-floor walls go up.

The basement is the part of a house that most often disappears from the drawings at the first revision of the budget — and not without reason. Walls built in an excavation need formwork on both faces, assembled in the tight space between the shutter and the face of the excavation, with everything that goes with it: working in the ground, supporting the excavation, pumping it out after every downpour. The concrete cures there in conditions nobody controls, and once the formwork is struck the surface can be uneven enough to need levelling before the tanking goes on — that is, one more wet trade in the worst possible place.