Belowground Ltd were contacted by Wiltshire based Magenta Construction Ltd who had been appointed by Channel 4 Television to completely refurbish the new River Cottage HQ an 18th century farmhouse on the Devon/Dorset border, part of the refurbishment included an extension that required a piled foundation, which you can now see completed above to the left of Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall.

This project presented us with a few structural challenges that we had overcome prior to us being able to start our piling works, firstly the 18th century farmhouse was built straight of the ground without any foundation and more importantly the gable end to which the extension was to be built against had already shown signs of movement. So it was decided along with our engineers that the gable end would need some traditional underpinning and temporary shoring to facilitate our works.

Above; Preparing for traditional underpinning.

Above; Scaffold shoring with existing movement evident around chimney stack.

Above; Gable end showing existing movement cracks.

Once the underpinning and shoring was in place we were able to commence piling works by pre auguring all pile positions with our T5000 drilling rig to a depth of 2mtrs to minimise ground vibration, following which the T1000 drop hammer rig was used for the easily accessible piles then we utilised our specialist restricted access T500 drop hammer rig for the piles that were between the shoring.

Above; T1000 drop hammer piling rig.

Above; T500 restricted access drop hammer piling rig.

In total 16no x 220mm steel cased bottom driven piles were installed to varying depths of between 8 and 12mtrs with all associated reinforced concrete ground beams.

The contract was completed within timescales and on budget.

Please contact us to see how we can assist with the transformation of your project.