Can I live in the house during a basement lowering dig in Fredericton?

Can You Stay in the House During a Basement Lowering in Fredericton?

Possibly, but it depends on how the work is staged and what the City of Fredericton's building department decides when you pull the permit. A basement lowering is structural work, and Fredericton requires a building permit before significant alterations; the City's Engineering Division also reviews water and sewer services and lot grading at the permit stage. Get that permit in hand before any machine touches the soil.

Whether the house can be occupied while the work goes on is a question for your engineer and the City's building department, not the excavator alone. Regulation 2021-2 calls for a footing and foundation inspection before any backfilling begins, so build that into the schedule.

WorkSafeNB's General Regulation 91-191 requires any trench or excavation 1.2 m (about 4 ft) or deeper that workers enter to be shored, sloped or benched, or cut in solid rock, and any shoring must be certified as adequate by an engineer. Inside a basement lowering, workers may well be working at or below that depth. That shoring requirement is the contractor's obligation, but you should ask how they plan to meet it before signing anything.

Before the machine arrives, two separate locate requests are needed. Info-Excavation, reached through Click Before You Dig, needs three working days' notice, and its locate is valid until the end date written on the request. NB Power runs its own separate underground locate service and asks for at least five business days' notice; that locate is valid for 60 days from the date on the locate form and covers only NB Power-owned lines. Private lines, such as wiring run to a garage or a subpanel, are yours to find and mark. The City of Fredericton's Engineering Division also reviews water and sewer services at the permit stage, so bring any existing service drawings to that conversation.

A few things worth confirming with the contractor before work starts:

• How rock, if encountered, is priced (hourly with a hydraulic breaker runs $200 to $300 per hour, and that can shift a budget quickly)
• Where the spoil goes and whether trucking is included in the quote
• The exact sequence for underpinning and how long each section is exposed
• A WorkSafeNB clearance certificate, confirming the contractor is in good standing with their workers' compensation account
• The 10% holdback under the Construction Remedies Act, kept for 60 days after substantial performance

We found no provincial excavation-contractor licence, so credentials are yours to check directly. Ask your insurer whether your home policy covers the structure while this kind of work is underway.

After the job is done, keep the locate records, your building permit, the engineer's shoring certification, the inspection sign-off from the City, and the written quote and final invoice together in one place in case a question about the work comes up later. A contractor match request through the form on this page goes to excavation contractors listed in the New Brunswick Construction Network directory.