In this case the space has been designed, either during construction or at a later point by the owners, to function as a fully habitable addition to the house. Frequently most or all of the basement is used as a recreation room or living room, but it is not uncommon as well to find there (either instead of or alongside the living/recreation room) a guest bedroom or teenager's room, a bathroom, a home office, a home gym, a home theater, a basement bar, a sauna, craft room, play room, kitchenette, and one or more closets.[18] Occasionally a part of the basement is unfurnished and is used for storage, a workshop, and/or a laundry room; when this is the case the water heater and furnace will also often be located there, although in some cases the entire basement is finished, and the water heater and furnace are boxed off into a closet.

Where drainage is inadequate, waterproofing may be needed. There are numerous ways to waterproof a basement, but most systems fall into one of three categories:

Tanking – Systems that bond to the basement structure and physically hold back groundwater.Cavity drainage – Dimpled plastic membranes are used to line the floors and walls of the basement, creating a drained cavity. Any water entering this drained cavity is diverted to a sump pump and pumped away from the basement.Exterior foundation drain – Installing an exterior foundation drain that will drain away by gravity is the most effective means to waterproof a basement. An exterior system allows water to flow away from the basement without using pumps or electricity. An exterior drain also allows for the installation of a waterproof membrane to the foundation walls.

There are literally hundreds of different challenges builders must overcome on different kinds of basement construction project. Consequently, it isn’t surprising to discover that there are hundreds of different building machines. To the typical man in the street, anything with a bucket on it is a “digger” or an “excavator”, but if you look a little closer you’ll see there are many kinds of “bucket” and many different machines to which they attach.

As well as excavators, basement companies in London might call on graders, rollers, loaders, backhoes, cranes, shoring equipment, forklifts, dumpers, piling rigs, hydraulic rams, bracers, planers, scrapers, trenchers, suction excavators or mobile mixers. (Don’t worry: they won’t all turn up on the same day!)