Footings & Excavation in Kettering, priced in writing before anything starts.
Groundworks in Kettering are dominated by what the existing buildings are standing on, and on the older housing that is frequently very little.
The artisan terraces were built quickly and economically, and their foundations reflect that. It is not unusual to find a wall sitting on a couple of corbelled courses of brick barely below ground level. Those buildings have stood for a century and a half perfectly happily, and they will continue to, provided nobody opens a deep trench alongside one in a single go on a Friday afternoon.
So the sequence matters more than the speed. We dig in short lengths, support as we go, and where a new foundation has to be significantly deeper than the existing one we design the connection rather than improvise it. If the honest answer turns out to be underpinning a section rather than trenching past it, we will say so.
On the larger houses the foundations are deeper and the margin greater, but it is still a matter for a trial hole rather than an assumption. That hole is the most useful hour spent on a Kettering project.
On shrinkable clay a foundation near a mature tree goes deeper than standard. 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 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 footings & excavation page.
The answers that genuinely differ from one Kettering street to the next.
Getting a machine to the rear of a terraced plot with no side entry is frequently impossible, and the job becomes a hand dig, which is several times the labour for the same hole. That belongs in the price at the start rather than arriving as a variation in week two.
Muck away needs a grab lorry with somewhere legal to stand, which on the older streets is a highway matter for North Northamptonshire Council rather than something to sort out on the morning.
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.
Where we find a wall standing on almost nothing we photograph it and show you rather than describing it. A picture of your own footing at the bottom of a trial hole settles the question of why the price is what it is faster than any explanation from us.
Part of our wider building work in Kettering.
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.
