Extensions in Burton Latimer, priced in writing before anything starts.
An extension in Burton Latimer is usually straightforward above ground and worth a proper look below it.
Ironstone was quarried here from about 1872 until 1921, north of the town first and then to the west and east, and a good deal of the housing that followed was built out across ground that had been worked and then restored. Those were shallow opencast workings rather than deep mines, so the concern is not voids underground. It is the backfill: the overburden that was put back into the excavation, at a time when restoration was not carried out to anything like a modern standard, and which may not be uniformly compacted or uniformly deep.
That has a direct consequence for a foundation. Backfill of that age can be perfectly adequate to found on, and it can vary in depth sharply within the footprint of a single extension, so that one end of a trench finds undisturbed ground at a metre and the other is still in fill at two. The answer is not to worry about it in the abstract, it is to dig a trial hole before the design is settled and find out.
Above ground this is conventional work. Most of the town is undesignated, permitted development is frequently available, and there is usually a drive for the skip and side access for the materials.
Our extensions work is set out in more detail there, including the stages of a build and how the Building Control inspections fit around them.
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 extensions page.
The answers that genuinely differ from one Burton Latimer street to the next.
We are not going to tell you your plot is on old quarry ground, because that is not something anybody can say from the pavement. What we will say is that a trial hole is cheap, that it answers the question definitively, and that on this town’s history it is the most useful thing anybody can do before committing to a foundation price.
Where the hole shows deep or variable fill, the honest answers may include a deeper trench fill foundation or a different foundation type. We will price the option that actually suits the ground rather than the one that suits the quotation.
Two storey work needs permission more often than people expect, and it also puts more load on whatever is underneath, which makes the ground question more rather than less important.
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.
