Footings & Excavation in Leamington Spa, priced in writing before anything starts.
Groundworks in central Leamington are dominated by one thing: you are usually digging next to something old, shallow and not designed for a neighbour.
Spa era buildings often have basements, and the walls retaining them were built with very little in the way of foundations by modern standards. Excavating alongside one is a job for care, sequencing and sometimes temporary support, not for taking out the full length in a morning because the machine is on hire. Where the wall is shared with the property next door this is party wall territory and it needs proper notice.
The ordinary considerations sit on top of that. On shrinkable clay a foundation near a mature tree goes deeper than standard, and Leamington has a great many mature trees, a good proportion of them protected by a conservation area designation. Establishing that with a trial hole beats discovering it with an open trench.
Access is the third factor and the one that most changes cost. Getting a machine to the rear of a terrace with no side entry is frequently impossible, and the job becomes a hand dig or a conveyor job, which is several times the labour for the same hole.
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 Leamington Spa street to the next.
Nothing gets dug until we know what is already down there. Gas, water, electricity and telecoms run through these gardens in positions that bear little relation to any record, and on streets laid out in the 1820s the records are the least reliable of all. We scan before breaking ground.
Muck away needs a grab lorry with somewhere legal to stand, and on a controlled parking street in central Leamington that is a highway matter for the county rather than something to sort out on the morning. It goes in the price at quotation stage.
Where we are excavating next to an old basement wall we monitor rather than assume. A few reference points, checked as the dig proceeds, tell you immediately if anything is moving and cost almost nothing. It is the difference between noticing a problem on day two and noticing it when a crack appears upstairs.
Part of our wider building work in Leamington Spa.
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.
