Drainage Work in Leicester, priced in writing before anything starts.
Drainage under Leicester’s Victorian streets was laid out for streets rather than for individual houses, and that is still the fact that governs most extension projects here.
A single run frequently serves several properties, passing under gardens and through walls that were built around it, and the manhole in your garden may be the only access point for a system serving four other households. That changes what can be built over, what can be diverted and who has to agree to it. We establish what serves what before a design is settled rather than after.
Where a run belongs to the water company rather than to you, and since 2011 a great many do, building over or close to it needs a build over agreement granted before the concrete goes in. It is a routine application and a serious problem to be caught without, because it surfaces during a sale when you are least able to deal with it.
On the larger villa plots the surface water side is the harder half. A big roof and a large area of hard surfacing produce a great deal of water, and a soakaway only works if the ground will accept it at a useful rate and it is sited a sensible distance from the building and the boundary.
On a system of this age we put a camera down before designing over anything. Our drainage work page covers surveys, repairs and new connections.
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 Leicester 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 drainage work page.
The answers that genuinely differ from one Leicester street to the next.
Every connection is tested before it is covered and recorded on a drawing you keep, which on a shared Victorian system is genuinely useful to whoever opens the ground next.
Where a shared run crosses a neighbour’s ground or serves several houses, the permissions and notices are agreed before the spade goes in. In a building divided into flats that can mean several parties and it takes longer to arrange than the work takes to carry out.
A connection into an existing manhole on a tight plot can mean a deep, narrow excavation next to a boundary wall built with very little foundation, and that is a job for shoring and care rather than speed.
Part of our wider building work in Leicester.
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.
