foundation depth in clay

[theoldun]

Dexterdo, This is getting complicated with all these quotes, so will make this simple as poss.
You have misunderstood us with regard to machine width. You need minimum access of 1.6m not 3.2m.
If push comes to shove, you can crane machine over house, and back out again on completion, cost about £600.00 VAT inclusive. Use two muck barrows for running spoil out.
As Ronny has said the conifers and birch are outside the zone of influence.
A lot of the rules and regs with regard to trees are in our opinion a load of bulls**t. We have pushed over and pulled out more than our fair share of Leylandii conifers. One will have a good thick tap root and very little fibrous root and the next will be the opposite. Trees need three things to survive, water, oxygen and minerals from the soil. Consequently they do not go down into clay seeking these three items, as they find them in the 600mm top spit.
If we were in your position, and had a reasonable relationship with neighbour, would offer to pay to have tree down, stump ground out cost about £350.00 and garden put back into immaculate condition, so that no one could suss out tree had ever been there. Would then offer him a bung of £200, to buy some new shrubs, etc or for him and his wife to go out for a good night
If you do, do this and only dig a metre deep, any roots that you may hit in foundation cut them back 500mm outside trench and backfill, so that BC do not see them. If they see roots, they will be looking for the tree.
Out of curiosity did the price of piling include the ring beam.
Hope we have been of some help.
oldun

 

[dexterdo]

Unfortunately there is another leylandi lopped to 20 feet at about 8m from the proposed extension!! The piling engineer misread our plans and now quotes around £10k, including beams etc, and so we are now looking at forgetting our extension until we can more easily afford it. If we patch our concrete driveway (15m) , replace our garage flat roof and raise the height to by about 6 inches on one side to get a conservatory under- would they need building regs approval? (We are in a bungalow)
We would need to move our rear garage wall back by 4` to put the lean to conservatory against it to square it off and get access from the house-there are 1 brick high walls where we would put the new garage walls from where we took down a dangerous greenhouse-do you think they would be classed as existing walls or do you think we would need to have the dreaded piles for pushing the garage walls back? Thank you

 

[dexterdo]

We wish to build an extension but we have 2 cypress trees 5-8m from the closest part of the extension on weald clay. We will need 2.5m foundations or piling if the tress stay but our neighbour has offered to remove them to help out. The building contril officer has seen the trees and knows they are there! If these cosest trees are removed them, then the closest trees are leylandii at 13m away, which I understand are too far away to be a problem. So if the 5m away cyrpesses are removed, do you think the BC officer will accept 1m foundations or still make us put in piling because of heave due to water swelling the clay? The trees were about 30` tall but were lopped to half height 2 years ago and are now about 20` high.
Another question too-we have an attached garage that is on its last legs-if we rebuild it on the same footprint do we need building regs approval?
Many thanks-site is fantasic