We've been in our house about 15 years.
In that time an oak tree in front of our house has grown from nothing (well actually an acorn I s'pose) to be about 15cm diameter.
What concerns me is that it's axis is about 60cm from our main water supply meter/stopcock, which is itself about 60cm underground.
Am I asking for trouble in the future if I leave it (the tree) alone?
Should I "euthenase" the tree as a precaution?
Any experience of similar situations out there?
David
Probably not,with an oak.
~Besides we LOVE the one that managed to take root in our garden..was about 15" tall when I bough the place,now its about 15'..they seem to get to full height in about 75 years, then just get THICKER.
I'd rather spend the money fixing the stopcock..a good english oak is a beautiful sight
Not oak, no. Main problems I have seen are willows and ash.
I doubt that the big roots will go down much below the depth you are at..the tree should simply grow around the stopcock. Ok come 150 years the thing may be an issue..but do you care?
Oak trees are nearly as bad as willows when it comes to subsidence caused by the water they transpire. The nearest an oak should be to your house is 1.5 times the drip line (IOW, 1.5 times the radius of the canopy).
I wouldn't worry about the water pipe, though.
In article , Huge writes
Point of order, Huge.
Does this rule apply where the subsoil is river gravel with a highish (3'0") water table?
I am about to re-build a farm toilet and am reluctant to destroy the Leylandi screen.
regards
Really? I didn;t know that...
Well lets see. the tree is 15 meters away and the foundations t th nearest point were dug 2.5 meters deep on account of the ash and maple trees 3 meters away..
So 10 meters is as high as it should go..and its about 3 now..and lets say no more than 50cm a year..
so 14 years on it MAY be an issue.
Sod it. ;-)
Ooh. Dunno. I'm quoting what the arborist said when we were having our "seasonal movement" investigated. I was trying to preserve the 80 y/o oak tree that actually overhung our house. There's also a Leylandii hedge about 3 metres from the house all down one side. The insurers wanted the tree felled and the hedge removed - I was trying to push for having the tree pollarded. Didn't care about the hedge (other than it shelters our otherwise very exposed house from the North.)
The 1.5 x figure was the arborists, and she agreed with the insurers that the oak had to go. It makes good firewood, though. :o(
She did say that Leylandii are nothing like as bad as people say, and agreed that the hedge could be cut back to 3 metres high.
We're on clay subsoil, though.
S'what the arborist said. Willows no closer than 2x the drip line and oaks no closer than 1.5x.
Although the figure I've seen for willows is that if you can see them from the house, they're too close. :o)
I wouldn't worry about it too much. Oak and house co-existed quite happily here for 80 years. I was upset to have it cut down, though. I liked it a lot.
When I did my house, Tim, the BCO insisted on soil samples to make sure that the base of the footings were well below 'tree root hair' level.
Since there was a pretty mature ash and maple tree right there, this ended up as about 2.2meters, and the digger over cut them to 2.5...
We also were required to line the footings with crushable foam sheet. So that heave would be absorbed where we had cut through the roots.
ISTR you have a digger..the answer is, go deep. Leylandii are particularly shallow rooted, and they do very little below about
0.5meters. If the soil is ultra soggy, they will not have an incentive to go deeper either.Frankly if you re in the least bit worried, check with BCO, but I would say a 1-1.5 meter trench full of concrete would be absolutely more than adequate to deal with any issues arising.
In essence, even in the ground gets dried up by the roots and shrinks, as long as the base of the footings are in the wet bit, you are essentially safe from downward movements, and if you lay a few bits of rebar in as well, it won't crack out sideways either.
The full monty of all foundations is to go about 2.5 meters down either with piles or a slit trench, and use rebar.
You can pretty much plant a willow alongside that and it will simply hit that. and turn round and run in the other direction. It can't undermine it.they just don't GO that deep. Not much really does, except in very dry soils..
If uou are paranoid as my BCO was, you pin (use lengths of rebar driven in sideways)slabs of polystyrene foam to the trench walls before pouring. Its cheap, and makes a gap between te soil and the footings..
I was a a bit aghast at all this, but then I worked out the costs, and for a few hundred I got total peace of mind. Worth it.
Oh dear..its gone?
Te alternative solution would have bee to go really deep and underpin.
I got an estimate of £1000 a meter for that for a project a friend was involved in.
Its a lot, but whats a mature oak worth? Priceless if it adds character.
I used to think that underpinning was a really expensive waste of time, but in the context of preserving old houses and trees, I rather think that is a Damn Good Thing, and sometimes its not such a huge proportion of the refurb cost of an old property.
Yep. Well, most of it is in the log store...
Sadly, one is entirely in the hands of the insurers, who will go for whatever is cheapest.
That figure is far too low. It needs to be nearly 20 metres. The following chart gives a good idea of safe distances.
Peter Crosland
Whatever. My oak tree is firewood now.
Nice site.
However it begs the question of 'how far down do the foundations have to go, to make all this pretty meaningless'
In article , Huge writes
So's the NP:-)
When they called out the BC guy to inspect the foundation trench for our house extension (metre deep) he said *go down a bit* where it was wet. So they dug out another 6" of gravelly river marl and created a 6" deep pond. Lots of shoulder shrugging and the concrete got poured.
The toilet will be ex-building control (agricultural:-) but I will try to conform for future proofing.
Anything beyond one metre is going to be water.
regards
That's good then. Pour the concrete into that. It will sink. ;-)
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