Footings & Excavation in Kenilworth, priced in writing before anything starts.
Groundworks in Kenilworth are dominated by trees, and it is not a small point. It is the single most common reason a foundation here costs more than the same foundation two towns away.
The Victorian and Edwardian plots are generous and heavily planted, and that planting has had a century to grow. On shrinkable clay, a foundation within influencing distance of a mature tree has to go deeper than the standard depth, sometimes very much deeper, and occasionally the right answer is a different foundation type altogether. The distance that matters depends on the species and the mature height, and it frequently extends further than people believe.
Because those trees are also protected by the conservation area, the excavation itself has to be considered, not just the depth. Digging a trench through a root protection area can kill a tree slowly, which is both an environmental problem and a legal one. Where a footprint comes close we hand dig within the root zone rather than putting a bucket through it.
We establish all of this with a trial hole before the design is fixed, because it is the difference between a known cost and a variation in week two.
Everything is inspected before it is covered. 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 Warwick 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 Kenilworth street to the next.
On a villa plot with a drive and a side gate a machine can usually reach the working area, which keeps the cost sensible. At the castle end, on the tighter older plots, a hand dig is often the only option and that is several times the labour for the same hole.
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.
There is a less well known risk on these plots that runs the opposite way to the usual one. Removing a large tree from shrinkable clay can allow the ground to swell back over several years, which lifts foundations rather than dropping them. Heave is slower and harder to fix than subsidence. If a tree is coming out near a proposed extension, that needs to be in the foundation design rather than treated as unrelated.
Part of our wider building work in Kenilworth.
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.
