Footings & Excavation in Northampton, priced in writing before anything starts.
Groundworks in the older parts of Northampton are less about what the ground is and more about what somebody already built on it.
Where a plot was a working yard, the ground under it is rarely undisturbed. We find old hardstanding, the foundations of demolished workshops, filled inspection pits and buried service runs that stopped being used decades ago. Some of that is a nuisance and some of it is an advantage, because an existing mass concrete base in the right place can be a genuinely useful thing to build off.
Either way, guessing is expensive. A trial hole before the design is fixed is the single most useful hour spent on a project in these streets, and it turns the biggest variable in a groundworks price into a known figure.
The ordinary considerations sit on top. On shrinkable clay a foundation near a mature tree goes deeper than the standard depth, sometimes considerably. We dig to find bearing rather than to reach a number on a drawing, and the inspector will want to see the same.
Everything is 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 West 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 Northampton street to the next.
The rear entries in the terraced quarter are the difference between a machine dig and a hand dig, and a hand dig is several times the labour for the same hole. It is the first thing we look for at the survey and it goes into the price honestly rather than being absorbed.
Muck away needs a grab lorry with somewhere legal to stand, which on these streets is a highway matter for the 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 a trial hole finds an old base sitting in exactly the right place we tell you it is a bonus, rather than quietly pricing a new one and pocketing the difference.
Part of our wider building work in Northampton.
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.
