Footings & Excavation in Burton Latimer, priced in writing before anything starts.
Groundworks is the trade where Burton Latimer’s history matters most, and it is worth setting out properly rather than gesturing at.
Ironstone was quarried here from about 1872, north of the town first and then west and east, and the last pits closed in 1921 when the ore ran out. Those were shallow opencast workings, so the concern is not underground voids. It is what went back into the hole. Overburden replaced in the 1900s and 1910s was not placed to any modern engineering standard, and a century of consolidation does not make variable fill into uniform ground.
The practical consequence for a foundation is depth to bearing that varies across a single footprint. It is entirely possible to find undisturbed ground at a metre at one end of a trench and to still be in fill at two metres at the other, and a foundation designed to a single assumed depth will then be adequate in one place and not in another.
That is why a trial hole comes before the design here rather than after the quotation. It is the most useful hour anybody spends on a project in this town, and it turns the largest variable in the price into a known figure. Where the fill is deep, the honest answers include a deeper trench fill foundation or a different foundation type altogether, and we would rather price the right one than the cheap one.
Everything is inspected before it is covered. We book the inspections and we do not pour over an unseen trench. Our footings and excavation page explains our approach.
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 North Northamptonshire 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 Burton Latimer street to the next.
We are not going to tell you your plot sits on former quarry ground. Nobody can say that from the pavement, and a builder who does is guessing with your money. What we will say is that the check is cheap and that on this town’s history it is worth doing.
Spoil from restored ground bulks up and will not compact back into the excavation, so muck away volumes run higher than a standard allowance assumes. We work them out from the hole rather than from a rate.
Nothing gets dug until we know what is already down there. We scan for services before breaking ground, which costs an hour and avoids an afternoon nobody wants.
Part of our wider building work in Burton Latimer.
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.
