If submitting a plan for building regs approval with the council etc, what information is needed about the soil so they can check the foundations are suitable. Or will they send someone out to do a soil survey at my expense. ? Simon.
Foundation inspection is part of the building control on-site inspection drill. Whatever the plans say, the foundations will have to be "suitable" and the BCO will require the builder to call him in to inspect them after digging and after concreting. Whatever the soil is like, you don't know what is down there until you dig (usually it's just the topsoil depth you are worried about but there may be a maze of old tree-roots (as my neighbour had) voids, other stuff.
Bob Mannix
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Well I guess its best to do some test holes to see what's down there then, before doing anything else ! Cheers, Simon.
Normally surveyors will be able to organise the testing of the mechanical properties of the soil, usually sampled from a test pit normally 1 m deep for this size of job. If you plan where the testpit is sited carefully, you can save a bit of digging. :-)
John Schmitt
On mine the footings were specced at 1 metre depth and if BCO doesn't like what he see's then you go deeper
Regards Jeff
This happened when my extension was built: isn't that the usual procedure? I wasn't aware that these test pits and soil samplings were commonplace without good reason.
David
In my case I just dag till it was 300mm below floor level, but I was on a rock/peble mixture.
You can work out the size of foundations from the wall load and soil type, and there is a simple guide do do with how hard it is to hammer in a wooden stake, which lets you work out soil strength.
Also you should have no vegtyable matter under the foundations, but I have no idea how that works if your house is say on an ond bog.
Rick
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