Peter Crosland wrote:
Huge wrote:
On 2007-12-22, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Vortex wrote:
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?

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.


Should I "euthenase" the tree as a precaution?

I'd rather spend the money fixing the stopcock..a good english oak
is a beautiful sight


Any experience of similar situations out there?

Not oak, no. Main problems I have seen are willows and ash.
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).

That figure is far too low. It needs to be nearly 20 metres. The following
chart gives a good idea of safe distances.

http://www.subsidencebureau.com/subsidence_trees.htm

There are other charts around and they correlate closely with these figures.

Peter Crosland


Nice site.

However it begs the question of 'how far down do the foundations have to
go, to make all this pretty meaningless'