Getting out of the ground
The moment the first shovel hits the earth marks a big step in your self build project – but if you’re not prepared, it’s also a time when costs can suddenly mount up
WORDS BY MIKE HARDWICK & CHRIS BATES
A site at Graven Hill with completed trench fill foundations. Plots on the custom build development are sold on a Golden Brick basis, so you buy the land and footings to suit your house design. Find out more on page 64
There’s one thing you can guarantee when building your own home: you won’t know what it’s actually going to cost to build until you are out of the ground. A perfectly innocuous-looking plot can hide all sorts of surprises underneath. So, before you buy a site, it’s vital to do some research to ensure you’re not confronted with mains sewer pipes, buried high-voltage cables or soil contamination – all of which can add significant cost and complexity to your build or even preclude development in some extreme cases. Here’s how to approach the groundworks and foundations stage of your project.
Do I need a soil survey?
One of the golden rules for any self build project is to find out as much as you can about the plot at the design stages – and the groundworks and foundations phase presents one of most common situations where costly issues can crop up. The cautious approach to managing this is to call in a structural engineer and have them conduct a full-blown soil survey, including digging test trenches. The problem is, they’ll naturally gravitate towards more highly engineered (and expensive) solutions, as they need to protect their reputation (and their professional indemnity insurance).