Cost for New Drains and Basement Floor

I always find it interesting to learn how much renovations cost, so I thought I would share some information about the estimates/costs for the work in our basement. We got a ton of quotes for a variety of different work, so here is a quick overview of some of the quotes from the most expensive to the least. All prices are in Canadian dollars and include taxes if applicable. For reference, our basement is 600 square feet.

• $54,000 - A general contractor provided this quote for breaking up the floor, underpinning, replacing the drains (including new bathroom), installing interior waterproofing, and pouring a new floor.
• $38,000 - A drain/concrete/underpinning specialist provided this quote for the same work described above. This contractor actually seemed much more knowledgeable and experienced with this type of work.
• $14,500 - A waterproofing company quoted this for breaking up the floor, installing interior waterproofing, and pouring a new floor (i.e. no drain wnrk).
• $8,800 - A general contractor quoted this for replacing the drains, installing interior waterproofing, and pouring a new floor (i.e. we break up floor).
• $6,800 - A concrete guy quoted this for breaking up the concrete floor, removing the necessary depth of dirt, and pouring a new concrete floor (i.e. no drain work or internal waterproofing).
• $5,600 - Six months later, the same concrete guy provided this quote to just lay gravel and pour a new concrete floor, so apparently breaking up the floor and removing the dirt was only worth $1,200.
• $3,800 - Quote provided by general contractor from the third bullet for just laying gravel and pouring a new concrete floor. This means that $5,000 of his $8,800 price above was for the drains and internal waterproofing.
• $2,600 - Price to get the plumber to do all drain work (i.e. replace old drains, rough-in the basement bathroom).
• $1,400 - Price to get concrete finisher to pour a new concrete floor (i.e. we do gravel work).

So, how much did we spend? Well, we decided pretty quickly that underpinning was not an option for us, as we simply could not afford it and were not confident that the ROI was there for our house. We got multiple quotes because we really wanted to hire a contractor to do most of this work (i.e. tight timeline, busy schedule with work and baby, etc). However, the more quotes we got, the more I realized that I would feel better doing some of the work myself. Here is the breakdown of our costs (and very conservative estimates of my time):

• Breaking up and removing concrete floor: $300 for dumpster, 10 hours of labour
• Removing dirt: $300 for dumpster, 20 hours of labour
• Drains: $2,600 for plumber, 0 hours of labour
• Waterproofing: $250 for materials, 10 hours of labour
• Gravel: $460 for 8 yards, 6 hours of labour
• Concrete floor: $525 for concrete, $1400 for finishers, 0 hours of labour
• Total: $5,835, 46 hours of labour

Obviously, this is just to do the drains and the new basement floor -- there is a heck of a lot more to be done to finish the basement. Looking back, the $8,800 and $6,800 quotes seem reasonable, but still would have required some additional work by us or another contractor. Overall, I am happy with the decisions we made regarding the use of contractors.