I would welcome some thoughts and ideas from the panel...
I am planning on replacing our lean-to conservatory with a proper (regs-com pliant) extension and knocking through from the house. To keep costs down, and avoid unnecessary duplication of work, I am wondering if some aspects o f the conservatory could be retained.
One such aspect is the cavity side wall seen here:
If building a new wall building regulations would, I believe, require footi ngs 60cm wide and 1m deep. According to the copy of the quote I have for th e conservatory (built before we purchased the house) this is exactly what t his wall was meant to have.
I am assuming that the building inspector would not be satisfied by the cla im on a piece of paper and, to be honest, neither am I. I am therefore wond ering how best to inspect what's actually there.
Digging a hole is obviously required but, as the following photo shows, acc ess is limited (I've got around 30cm from the wall to the fence):
I could remove the fence for better access but nevertheless I'm wondering w hat's the easiest way to do dig this hole would be? I'm thinking that if I could bore a hole of, say, 10-15cm wide (and upto 1m deep) I could lower a camera to inspect the base. It could even be narrower - indeed I did think of just hammering down an iron rod to see if I could detect the depth of th e footings as I don't expect the surrounding earth to be necessarily hard t o get through. If the results are promising then I'd be quite happy to dig a bigger hole to show the inspector if required.
What I don't want to do is pass off this opportunity, knock the wall down, dig foundations and then find out I had everything I needed already there!
Any ideas how to do DIY this at minimum cost, hassle, risk(!) etc?
Mathew