Footings & Excavation in Coventry, priced in writing before anything starts.
Groundworks decide whether everything after them runs to programme. In Coventry we look at three things before quoting one.
Trees come first. On shrinkable clay a foundation near a mature tree has to go deeper than standard, sometimes considerably deeper, and occasionally the answer is a different foundation altogether. This is the single most common reason a groundworks price moves between quotation and dig, so we would rather establish it with a trial hole than assume it.
Made ground is the second, and Coventry has more of it than most cities its size. Large parts of the city were cleared and rebuilt within living memory, and what sits under a back garden is not always the ground you would choose. We dig to find bearing rather than to reach a figure on a drawing, and the inspector will want to see the same.
Access is the third. Getting a machine onto a terraced plot with no side entry is sometimes simply not possible, and the job becomes a hand dig or a conveyor job. That is a real difference in cost and in programme and it belongs in the price from the start rather than arriving as a variation in week two.
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 how we approach foundations and site preparation.
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 Coventry City 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 Coventry street to the next.
Muck away is the half of groundworks nobody costs properly. A grab lorry needs somewhere legal to stand, and on Coventry’s older streets that is a highway matter for the city council rather than something to sort out on the morning. Where a machine cannot reach the rear, a hand dig is several times the labour for the same hole. We work all of this out at quotation stage and put it in the price.
Nothing gets dug until we know what is already down there. Gas, water, electricity and telecoms all run through Coventry gardens in positions that frequently bear no relation to where anybody expects, and the older the street the less reliable the records. We scan before we break ground. It costs an hour and it is the difference between a routine morning and an emergency call to a utility with the whole street watching.
Part of our wider building work in Coventry.
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.
