Footings & Excavation in Leicester, priced in writing before anything starts.
Groundworks in Leicester are dominated by trees, and on the Victorian villa plots that is not a small point.
Those plots are deep and were planted generously a century ago. On shrinkable clay, a foundation within influencing distance of a mature tree has to go deeper than the standard depth, sometimes very much deeper, and occasionally the right answer is a different foundation type altogether. The distance that matters depends on the species and the mature height and it frequently extends further than people believe.
There is a less well known risk that runs the opposite way. Removing a large tree from shrinkable clay can allow the ground to swell back over several years, lifting foundations rather than dropping them. Heave is slower and considerably harder to remedy than subsidence, so if a tree is coming out near a proposed extension that belongs in the foundation design rather than being treated as an unrelated job.
Because those trees are protected inside a conservation area, the excavation itself matters as much as the depth. Digging through a root protection area can kill a tree slowly, which is both an environmental and a legal problem, so we hand dig within the root zone where a footprint comes close.
We establish all of this with a trial hole before the design is fixed. Our footings and excavation page explains how we approach foundations and site preparation.
Four things we commit to on every job, rather than four things we say about ourselves.
Permitted development is not an exemption from Building Regulations. We arrange the Leicester City Council inspections, meet the inspector on site at each stage and see the work through to sign off. We do not make the application itself, and we will tell you what is needed and when.
Free, and you get it before you commit to us. Party walls and skip licences are raised at quotation stage, not three weeks into the dig.
The same people do the groundworks, the brickwork and the fit out. Nobody hands your job to a subcontractor you have never met.
You get a straight answer rather than a padded price. It costs us a job occasionally and saves you a great deal more.
Process, specification and what moves the price are set out on our footings & excavation page.
The answers that genuinely differ from one Leicester street to the next.
On a villa plot with a drive and a side gate a machine can usually reach the working area, which keeps the cost sensible. On a terrace with no side entry it becomes a hand dig, which is several times the labour for the same hole and belongs in the price from the start.
Muck away needs a grab lorry with somewhere legal to stand, and on a residents’ parking street in the city that is a highway matter for Leicester City Council rather than something to sort out on the morning.
Nothing gets dug until we know what is already down there. Services run through these gardens in positions that bear little relation to any record, so we scan before breaking ground.
Part of our wider building work in Leicester.
Send photographs and a rough brief, or call and talk it through. We will tell you if a job is not right for us.
Southfield Construction (Rugby) Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company 14209138.
