New build house next to a oak tree

angryman258

Hi All

I wondered what your opinion of this would be...

My wife and I really like a new build house but the builder has built it approximately 8m from a mature oak tree.

The tree looks really nice next to the house, but I've read that a safe building distance for a oak tree is 20m to 30m as roots can cause subsidence in the future.

Does anyone have any experience of buildings near trees? Should I be concerned?

Thanks for you help

Alex

Atomix

Trees are worth the insurance article from telegraph may help your view...

I sense a threat to our leafy suburbs. Designers are telling me of increasing problems with insurance companies and their risk assessments of trees planted near buildings. Ever more fearful of litigation, assessors are veering towards caution. On some sites the warning may be against planting new trees and, on others, removing mature ones.
I have just come indoors fresh from a felling. It was the tall eucalyptus (E. glaucescens) on my garden’s boundary. Gavin, the tree surgeon, was up there with rope and chainsaw, and my brother was loading the larger cut sections onto his trailer to take home: eucalyptus is a terrific slow-burning wood, but it has to be logged quickly as it dries to iron.
Fifty-feet high and only 50ft from the house, my eucalyptus would no doubt have given insurance assessors the jitters. But I ordered its execution myself. I had been getting increasingly uneasy about its alien impact as its white trunks rose up ever higher, out-competing the local limes, wild cherries and pines. For anyone thinking of planting a eucalyptus, my advice is to pick the snow gum, Eucalyptus pauciflora subsp. niphophila, which has much more modest aspirations.
The execution of my big tree was nothing to do with its proximity to the house. In fact, I consider myself very lucky to live in a neighbourhood where all the houses are easy shot-put distances from large, mature trees: trees which countrify the landscape, moderate the weather, produce a tawny owl or a spotted woodpecker right next to my bedroom window, and let me wander around all morning in my dressing gown if I want.
The soil around here is a sandy loam. What troubles risk assessors more than anything is clay, which can shrink when water is extracted from it by trees.

And when they encounter it, they consult tables such as the Kew Root Survey to tell them what the supposedly safe distances are for each category of tree from a house: 59ft for thirsty trees like oaks and willows, 39ft for a sycamore or a lime, 26ft for an apple… Of course, such tables are all broad-brush. They don’t encompass the infinite variables — individual tree species, clones and grafts, the canopy and age of a tree, the particularities of the site…
If they are rigidly interpreted by an assessor, a gardener can be left with little room to manoeuvre. After all, gardens tend to be fairly small, and vast tracts of the country are on clay, including most of London. That doesn’t allow for much tree planting. One designer friend of mine was recently informed that a young pear tree she had just planted 10ft from a wall posed “a medium risk” to the house’s structure (which was sound). And, of course, at the very mention of the word subsidence, the assessor is likely to bring out his measuring tape and head for the nearest tree.
As Gavin points out to me, whether that tree is the cause of the problem can be hard to ascertain, but likely as not it will be blamed and — if there is not a very persuasive defence advocate present, such as council tree officer clutching a Tree Preservation Order — it can be summarily dispatched.
Yes, trees can affect buildings and exacerbate structural weaknesses in foundations. But balanced against that must be their huge environmental benefit and the knowledge that millions of us live in close proximity to them, including on clay soils, with no problems. In place of my eucalyptus, I already have a large dawn redwood growing strongly towards the sky.

POPPYOSCAR

When we built our house we had/have loads of trees around us, and a beautiful oak tree is a feature in the middle of our drive just in front of the house.

The builders went further down with the foundations than absolutely necessary and we were assured by everyone involved in the build that the trees would not pose a problem.

Have you spoken to the builders about this?

I_have_spoken

8m is borderline IMHO and could be a cause of problems.

Few things to check

+ Are you on clay soil, that increases chance of subsidence?
+ Have you had a quote for insurance after notifying them of the tree?
+ Will all costs for future maintenance fall to you - tree surgeons charge £££s
+ Will the tree create unwelcome shade across garden or block light to windows?
+ Had the builder deepened foundations and/or added a root barrier
+ Are the drains running well away from the tree
+ Is there already a TPO in place :eek: