Footings & Excavation in Market Harborough, priced in writing before anything starts.
Groundworks in Market Harborough have an access problem that is specific to the town, and it is a planning one rather than a physical one.
On many older properties the obvious way to get a machine to the back garden is through the front, taking down a section of boundary wall and reinstating it afterwards. In Little Bowden that is not a straightforward option, because boundary treatments are exactly what the Article 4 direction protects. So the access route has to be settled at the design stage, and where the boundary genuinely cannot be opened the job may become a hand dig, which is several times the labour for the same hole.
That is not a reason to avoid the work. It is a reason to price it honestly at the start rather than discovering it in week two, and it is one of the clearest examples on our patch of why a quotation given without walking the plot is worthless.
The ordinary considerations apply on top. On shrinkable clay a foundation near a mature tree goes deeper than the standard depth, sometimes considerably, and in a conservation area that tree is protected as well. We establish it with a trial hole rather than assuming.
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 Harborough District 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 Market Harborough street to the next.
Muck away needs a grab lorry with somewhere legal to stand, which on the older streets is a highway matter for Leicestershire County Council rather than something to sort out on the morning.
Where the answer is a hand dig we say so at the quotation and show you the difference in the price, rather than quoting the machine rate and finding a reason later.
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.
Laying temporary hardstanding on a front garden to get plant in is a normal thing to do in most towns. In the designated areas here it is not automatically available, because the frontage itself is what is being protected, so the site set up gets agreed at the design stage rather than assumed on the first morning.
Part of our wider building work in Market Harborough.
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.
