My family estimates our house was probably built in the 20s-30s, and while it's been restored in many areas. It looks relatively nice, but our basement most definitely has received next to no love... well, at least not in the 20 years we've owned it. The basement floor seems to have once been a concrete poured over loose gravel, but I'm not positive. It seems like over the years, some high points had their contents shift, became empty, and shattered when they were hit wrong. There are a TON of spots down there where the floor goes down a good 2-3 inches and are just filled with rubble. We use the basement exclusively for laundry and junk storage though, so it's never been an issue.However, the folks on /r/DanceDanceRevolution are starting to get me nostalgic, and are making me realize that I'm suddenly at a point in my life where I can get away with owning an entire arcade machine just for myself. However, to set up a DDR machine, I'm gonna need a flat, stable area of ground to set it up on. Height clearance isn't a huge issue, since I've measured the machine to fit vertically and I'm pretty short, so no worries there. It's the floor I'm worried about.Here's a gallery of a couple pictures I took of the floor, pardon the junk.Even in areas where the floor isn't cracked open, the ground is far from perfect. In the final picture there, if you look closely, shows a large bulge in the ground probably a foot wide and 2 inches tall.The guides I've found online for repairing cracks usually seem to deal with hairline fractures in a pad of concrete, and the ones for non-level floors seem to be dealing with otherwise stable ground. Since I have neither, I'm looking for advice from you fine folks. I can't imagine just pouring a fresh layer over top and using carefully cut frames to ensure level is gonna be the greatest choice, considering I have no way to gurantee the structural integrity of the foundation BELOW my newly poured section, but maybe I'm wrong.I have basically no experience with pouring foundation, but I imagine I'd get help from some friends who do, I'm just looking to have a gameplan ready when I try to rally their assistance.I've also looked briefly into whether it'd be easier to just build a wooden platform to put the dance floor onto. I imagine it'd work best to then stabilize it by either drilling it into the ground and cutting the feet make the resulting platform as level as possible. However, I'm not sure that's the greatest choice, considering the dance pad floors for DDR arcade machines weigh around 200 pounds on their own, and I'm going to be literally jumping up and down on them. Stability and a solid feeling is essentially the entire point of having one of these things in your house, so that's not a sacrifice I'm rushing to make.I'm not looking to replace the entire floor - that's out of budget and out of the scope of this project. I'm just looking to repave a section that'd be around 6 feet by 6 feet square, assuming the dimensions on this site are accurate.Thanks for the help, everyone! via /r/DIY http://bit.ly/2D6Oc9O
