I have a concrete foundation around my basement with a luandry room and a bedroom. Five feet from that foundation I have a five foot tall cinder block foundation that runs around my whole basement. It is filled with dirt and has plastic on top of it. My question is can this retaining wall be removed or at least moved within a foot of the original foundation to make more room for my family? I am putting egress windows down there and some of it will have to be removed regardless to install the windows..

Thank you Will

Any idea why the 2 of them are there? Are they both supporting any exterior walls or load bearing walls? Without more info it is hard for us to answer. I would consult a structural engineer if there are any doubts.

Is this a new-ish house? I have seen this in houses where they were trying to meet zoning requirements for maximum floor space by making the basement smaller. Crawl spaces do not count as floor space, so perhaps they were claiming that the strip aroudn the outside of the basement does not get included in total floor space.

Just to make sure I understand, the cinder block wall does not touch the ceiling?

This sounds like a home originally built with no basement so that outter foundation wall likely only goes down about 48". Later someone wanted a basement and cheated by stepping in a few feet, digging down and adding a floor. To be 100% sure you need to dig a pit along the outside of the cement foundation and see how deep you go before the footings, my bet is it won't be 8'.

Thank you. This is a house from the 50's and it does not have anything weight bearing on the cinder. I believe they cheated also so great idea ill get to digging. This is a small town in Idaho so maybie I will get lucky and they just didn't know what they were doing in the first place:)