They laughed when I told them the cost of the Foundations

By September 30, 2013Uncategorized

 

The foundations cost more than the house

We recently met with a new Client, who was referred to us from one of the bigger Builders in town. He was looking to build a lower ground floor to a small workers cottage in Rozelle. At first pass, the drawings looked simple enough, CFA piers as shoring walls.

But when we looked at the Geotechnical Report, there was sound rock only 1 m from the surface. To create the lower floor was going to take some serious rock drilling. So I gave them the price and they laughed, and said,

“You can’t be serious, this costs more than the house!!”

After the laughter died down, we dug a test hole on site, and Access Piering was able to offer a Design and Construct package for the foundations. We got our Engineer involved, deleted one wall entirely, changed one wall to underpinning, and the other to a soldier pile detail.

We saved the Client thousands of real dollars, making the project viable.

In these tough times, we have some very real advice to make sure you don’t get ripped off next time you buy Foundations