BaseBuild Groundworks Construction

"BaseBuild handled the structural steelwork and temporary propping for a load bearing wall removal on the ground floor of our property. The opening was wider than usual and the engineer specced a fairly heavy beam plus a pad stone arrangement on one side because of an existing chimney breast. Before they touched anything they put the propping in across both floors, and it stayed there longer than I assumed it would because they wanted the steel fully bedded before releasing any load. The beam went in on a Thursday and by the following week the propping was out and the plasterer could start. What I noticed most was that the floor above hasnt shifted at all, no cracks in the bedroom ceiling, no sticking doors upstairs. For the kind of work where you only really know if it was done right months later, thats what matters."

"We had water coming into the basement every time it rained heavily. It had been a problem since we moved in but last winter it got bad enough that we couldn't use the space at all - standing water along the back wall and damp creeping up everywhere. We spoke to a couple of companies around Marylebone and got mixed advice, but BaseBuild were the ones who came out and actually diagnosed it properly. Turned out the original tanking membrane had failed in a few spots and the drainage channel along the base was basically blocked. They stripped back the affected walls, installed a new cavity drain membrane system, put in a sump pump, and redid the drainage run to the exterior. It was about two and a half weeks of work and they kept us updated on progress each day which made it easier since we were living upstairs the whole time. We've had a few heavy storms since and the basement has stayed completely dry. Made what was basically a dead room into usable storage again which is all we really wanted."

"Our build had basically stopped at the groundwork stage because nobody wanted to take proper responsibility for that part. A few people were happy to talk in general terms, but when it came to the digging, concrete and making sure the base was actually right, things got vague fast. BaseBuild were a lot more direct about it. They looked over the site, pointed out what needed doing first and what had to wait, and that was probably the first time this part of the job felt clear instead of slightly all over the place. What I liked was that the conversations stayed plain. If something needed sorting before the next step, they just said so. No long speech, no hard sell. Once they got going, you could see the difference on site pretty quickly. It started looking like a job that was under control rather than one everyone was tiptoeing around. The excavation was done properly, the concrete side looked right, and the steel supports were worked in without making it sound more complicated than it needed to be. This was one of those stages where getting it wrong would have caused problems later, so I paid more attention than usual. In the end that was the main reason I felt good about using them - not because they talked a big game, but because the work itself made the next part of the build possible again."

"They did the underpinning in alternate bays which I guess is standard but they explained why each section needed to cure before moving on, which none of the others even mentioned. The thing that sticks with me is how the lead on site caught a misalignment in one of the steel beams for the new opening before it got concreted in, something our building control officer said he would have flagged later anyway but it saved us probably two weeks of rework. Still got the landscaping to sort out but the structural stuff is all signed off now."

"We had subsidence along the rear wall of our terrace in London and two other companies basically said it was too tight an access to get equipment tin. BaseBuild came out, assessed i it, and did the underpinning in sections without even touching the neighbor's fence which I thought was going to be impossible."