Drainage Work in Wellingborough, priced in writing before anything starts.
Drainage is the trade the Nene valley position affects most directly, and the headline is simple: soakaways are less reliable here than the standard design assumes.
A soakaway works by putting water into the ground and relying on the ground to take it away. That requires the ground to be permeable and, just as importantly, requires the water table to be low enough that there is somewhere for the water to go. On lower lying valley ground the second condition frequently fails even where the first one holds, and it fails seasonally, so a soakaway that performs perfectly well in July can be full and useless from November.
That is why a percolation test here is not a formality, and why the test result and the time of year it was taken both matter. Where the answer is that a soakaway will not do the job, the alternatives are attenuation with a controlled discharge, a connection to an existing surface water system where one exists, or reducing how much hard surface the scheme creates in the first place.
What does not work is building the soakaway anyway, which is what a price that skipped the test is quietly assuming.
On the foul side the usual rules apply: where a run belongs to the water company, building over or close to it needs consent granted before the concrete goes in. Our drainage work page covers surveys, repairs and new connections.
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 drainage work page.
The answers that genuinely differ from one Wellingborough street to the next.
Excavating for drainage on ground that holds water is slower and needs the trench supported and sometimes pumped, and we price for the ground we expect rather than the ground we would prefer.
Every connection is tested before it is covered and recorded on a drawing you keep, including the position and size of any soakaway or attenuation, which is exactly what nobody can find later.
Where a run crosses a neighbour’s ground the permissions are agreed before the spade goes in rather than after.
The time of year a percolation test is carried out matters here more than it does on higher ground. A test taken in a dry August can give a result with no relationship to the same hole in February, and a soakaway designed off the optimistic figure will fail in exactly the season you need it. Where the timing is unhelpful we say so rather than quietly using the number that suits the design.
Part of our wider building work in Wellingborough.
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.
