Our home was built 1950 and includes a concrete bomb shelter buried in the backyard. There is an access door from our basement. We suspect the concrete walls of the shelter were poured with the foundation. The yard has sunk in around the "hatch" area to the shelter. We now want to put a deck out in the back yard over that very area of the yard--in part to finally cover the metal "hatch" cover. Looking for suggestions on what must be done to insure the integrity of the area. Do we need to collaspe the concrete walls in and fill the entire area? Could we ecavate the area and just set our deck footings on the concrete walls? Any thoughts on how to build over the bomb shelter would be appreciated. Thanks.

Setting the piers for your deck on top of walls of the shelter will provide a solid base for your deck. But I wouldn't place any on the roof of the shelter. The roof may be designed to hold the load of the earth above it and then some, but I wouldn't trust it for the load of a deck that may at some point be full of people.

Best thing I can suggest is to locate the limits of the shelter so you know where the wall are, and use that footprint to help you in designing your deck and the support structure to hold it up.

[This message has been edited by treebeard (edited June 24, 2003).]