Drainage Work in Burton Latimer, priced in writing before anything starts.
Drainage in Burton Latimer turns on a single question more than anywhere else: will the ground actually take water.
A soakaway is the default answer for surface water on a modern plot, and it works by putting water into the ground and relying on the ground to accept it at a useful rate. On restored quarry ground that assumption is unreliable in a specific way. Backfill placed a century ago can be free draining in one part of a site and heavily compacted clay overburden a few metres away, so two soakaways on the same estate can perform completely differently.
The consequence is that a percolation test here is not a formality, and a design that skipped it is quietly assuming an answer nobody checked. A test costs very little against a soakaway that fills in October, stays full until spring and takes the new patio with it.
Where the test comes back badly, the alternatives are worth knowing before the extension is designed rather than after: 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.
On the foul side, where a run belongs to the water company rather than to you, 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 Burton Latimer street to the next.
Excavating into old backfill can be quick in one place and slow in another within the same trench, because the material varies. We price the ground the trial hole showed and tell you plainly what would change it.
Every connection is tested before it is covered and recorded on a drawing you keep, including the position and size of any soakaway, which is exactly what nobody can find when it matters.
Where a run crosses a neighbour’s ground, or theirs crosses yours, the permissions are agreed before the spade goes in rather than after.
Modern estate roofs are large and shed a great deal of water quickly, and the downpipe positions were set for the original house rather than for the extension you are adding. Where a new roof area drains into a downpipe that was already at capacity, the overflow appears at ground level against a wall, and that is worth designing out at the start.
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.
