Footings & Excavation in Lutterworth, priced in writing before anything starts.
Groundworks decide whether the rest of a job runs to programme, and in Lutterworth there are three things we look at before quoting one.
Trees come first. The gardens in the older part of the town are long and many of them have had a substantial tree in them for a century. On shrinkable clay, a foundation near a mature tree has to go deeper than the standard depth, sometimes considerably deeper, and occasionally the answer is a different foundation altogether. This is the single most common reason a groundworks price moves between the quotation and the dig, so we would rather establish it with a trial hole first.
Made ground is the second. The medieval core of the town has been built on, knocked down and built on again for a very long time, and what is under a back garden there is not always the ground you would like. We dig to find bearing rather than to reach a number on a drawing, and the building inspector will want to see the same.
Access is the third. Getting a machine onto a burgage plot with no side entry is sometimes impossible, and the job becomes a hand dig or a conveyor job. That is a real difference in cost and in programme and it needs to be in the price at the start rather than appearing as a variation in week two.
Everything gets 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 Harborough 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 Lutterworth street to the next.
Getting plant onto a Lutterworth plot is the question that decides the groundworks price. A machine that cannot reach the back of a burgage plot means a hand dig, and a hand dig is several times the labour for the same hole. Muck away is the other half: a grab lorry needs somewhere legal to stand, and on the narrow streets in the middle of town that is a highway matter for Leicestershire County Council rather than something to sort out on the morning. We work all of this out at the quotation stage and put it in the price.
Part of our wider building work in Lutterworth.
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.
