Eucalyptus tree 3m from house

paul123

Hi I am in the process of selling my house but surveyor has picked up on neighbours tree 3m from house. He has requested a structural engineer to come and inspect. I am in the process of having tree took down sharing cost with neighbour. There is no TPO on it. Will this suffice ? There is no obvious subsidence or cracking of brickwork. Tree is about 10 years old but about 10m high. I am just curious about what he will say or look at. Thanks for any advice.

FreeBear

Eucalyptus is a fast growing tree with a shallow root system. Even although the roots are shallow, they do spread quite a distance... Depending on the depth of your foundations and soil type, it shouldn't be a major issue at present.

GDB2222

If you take the tree down all in one go, that could conceivably cause heave. As FB says, it depends on the soil etc.

paul123

Thanks for your replies. It is a modern  detached house about 20 years old so I think after doing some research it should be built on a concrete raft so in theory roots should not be able to penetrate.

[Deleted User]

Property I was doing a mortgage for a few years back had this come up from surveyor.  Owner thought they would deal with it by getting rid of tree.  1 year later they were still dealing with the knock on effect of the ground moving around due to the sudden absence of a tree (heave).  Luckily client saw the impending disaster and backed out of the purchase well before the extension started separating itself from the house

I assume you are getting a tree surgeon in to remove it?  

daveyjp

My parents neighbours have a eucalyptus tree which is about 40m tall!  It is however more than 40m from any property.

Removal is a good call as it will grow very tall, but as an Australian native tree heave due to the tree no longer taking water shouldn't be too much of a concern.

GDB2222

Deleted_User said:

Property I was doing a mortgage for a few years back had this come up from surveyor.  Owner thought they would deal with it by getting rid of tree.  1 year later they were still dealing with the knock on effect of the ground moving around due to the sudden absence of a tree (heave).  Luckily client saw the impending disaster and backed out of the purchase well before the extension started separating itself from the house

I assume you are getting a tree surgeon in to remove it?  

As I said, you can get heave. 

eddddy

paul123 said:

Thanks for your replies. It is a modern  detached house about 20 years old so I think after doing some research it should be built on a concrete raft so in theory roots should not be able to penetrate.

The problem isn't from roots penetrating anything.

The problem is that a tree 'sucks' water out of the ground. As the tree gets bigger, it sucks out more water. If the soil is clay, the clay will shrink when more water is sucked out of it.

If you imagine that the soil shrinks under maybe one corner (or maybe one half) of the concrete raft, the raft can crack and fall downwards. (Or maybe the raft and house tilts a bit.)

But if you cut down the tree, it's no longer 'sucking' water out of the ground. So clay soil could swell up. And maybe a corner (or maybe one half) of the raft is pushed upwards by the swelling soil, and again it cracks. (Or maybe the raft and the house tilts a bit.)

stuart45

The Eucalyptus is a high water demand tree, and 3 metres is close. The NHBC foundation calculator wants an engineer designed foundation in high and medium shrinkable soil and 2.3 M deep foundations in low.

zagubov

My OH used to live across the Pond where people build their houses from timber and grow trees near them for shade.
But they tend to rebuild their houses cheaply from kits every few decades so they're hardly concerned about the house lasting for more than three or four decades, let alone their lifetime, as they'll easily move jobs and houses at least two or more times as often as we do in Blighty.
Growing trees too near our houses isn't a great thing.