Long story short, I bought a house that is essentially a tear down and rebuild. I knew this going in. Basically, what is going to be salvaged is the foundation and keeping the footprint of the house in tact. I'm trying to design the basement layout and just wanted a better understanding of how structural beams work in the basement. A structural engineer will be hired but I would like to know if I want to do is realistically feasible. The basement dimensions on one side is roughly 48 feet long by 13 feet wide and another section 26 feet wide by 36 feet wide. the one side sticks out roughly 6 feet on the from and back. Currently, there is one steel beam that spans the full 48 feet with support posts about 8 feet apart. There are 2 steel beams that span the 36 feet with support posts about 8 feet apart. The house is a bungalow/cape code which has second story bedrooms. I'll also add that on the other side of the 48 foot long wall is a 24 foot long crawlspace for the breezeway to the garage which is a slab. My goal here is that I want to have the section that is 26 x 36 as open as possible. Would it be possible to span that 36 feet with only one support in the middle? What size beam would be looking at? I'm sure anything is possible but is this realistic? When I talk with the engineer and the contractor, I want to have some information.

I own a 3 season cottage that is built on concrete posts that are embedded into the bedrock. I would like to use the cottage in winter and I was thinking that encapsulating the crawlspace under the cottage is probably the best option. I am looking for some reference material on all the steps that I would need to do to make sure that the water system is usable in the winter. My thinking was to: [list=1] [*]Pour concrete footing between the existing concrete posts around the exterior of the crawlspace. I was thinking about using ICF forms to do that. [*]Then I would construct 2” x 4” walls on top of the footings. [*]The walls would then be insulated and I would add vinyl siding to the exterior walls. [*]Once that is complete, I can add vapour barrier directly on the bedrock floor. [*]Then I would add a baseboard heater to keep the area at a minimum temperature of 7 degree celcius [/list] Any thoughts on my steps. Am I missing something? Am I making this more complicated than I need to?