I would welcome some thoughts and ideas from the panel...

I am planning on replacing our lean-to conservatory with a proper (regs-compliant) extension and knocking through from the house. To keep costs down, and avoid unnecessary duplication of work, I am wondering if some aspects of the conservatory could be retained.

One such aspect is the cavity side wall seen he

http://www.newtonnet.co.uk/permanent...ysidewall1.jpg

If building a new wall building regulations would, I believe, require footings 60cm wide and 1m deep. According to the copy of the quote I have for the conservatory (built before we purchased the house) this is exactly what this wall was meant to have.

I am assuming that the building inspector would not be satisfied by the claim on a piece of paper and, to be honest, neither am I. I am therefore wondering how best to inspect what's actually there.

Digging a hole is obviously required but, as the following photo shows, access is limited (I've got around 30cm from the wall to the fence):

http://www.newtonnet.co.uk/permanent...ysidewall2.jpg

I could remove the fence for better access but nevertheless I'm wondering what's the easiest way to do dig this hole would be? I'm thinking that if I could bore a hole of, say, 10-15cm wide (and upto 1m deep) I could lower a camera to inspect the base. It could even be narrower - indeed I did think of just hammering down an iron rod to see if I could detect the depth of the footings as I don't expect the surrounding earth to be necessarily hard to get through. If the results are promising then I'd be quite happy to dig a bigger hole to show the inspector if required.

What I don't want to do is pass off this opportunity, knock the wall down, dig foundations and then find out I had everything I needed already there!

Any ideas how to do DIY this at minimum cost, hassle, risk(!) etc?

Mathew