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As I'm getting the roof taken off the bungalow next week, I thought that I had best get my site insurance sorted out. When I was ringing around for quotes, every organisation asked whether the build would need piles in the foundations to which I answered in the negative as I had not heard anything to the contrary. HOWEVER, the lack of information in one area doesn't equate to certainty in another so I contacted MBC for some information from their SE as to whether he felt, at this stage, I would need to have piled foundations before going ahead and purchasing insurance. The SE, via MBC, got back very quickly indeed. This is the plan of our site with the existing and new structures superimposed, as well as where hedges and trees have been. The handwritten comments are self explanatory, but the orange areas are where the excavation needs to go much deeper than usual, probably about 1200mm, then back-filled with hardcore. Zarucki Fill_Excavation Depths.pdf So, to dig deep or to go for piles? The SE has said that both will work and the deciding factor is which is cheapest. In the sums I will need to do next week, I will also need to account for the cost of getting any piling system designed as MBC don't do this, then also getting the piles, foundation and super structure all connected up; please excuse the lack of technical terms. At the moment, I have no idea of what piling system would be needed, but if it's anything like @recoveringacademic experience, then it could be a process that requires a piling mat meaning I'll have almost formed the MBC foundation anyway. For those who want to read about Ian's experience, his excellent blog account of piles is here: Recovering academic's pile blog Of particular note is @Calvinmiddle's comment about his deeper foundation on clay for an MBC build. At the moment, I'm heavily leaning towards the deeper foundation and no piles. I will check out the economics of it; if it's a close thing, I would prefer to avoid piling just because I feel more comfortable with the principles involved in the deeper hard core layer and it avoids involving yet another contractor. But who knows - until 10.00am this morning, I had no idea what a piling mat was and a week is a long time in self-building.