is the tree causing the problem here

RobAMerc

Hi folks,

My front wall is in bad shape and I think the tree outside it is causing it to raise up.
Coucil came and said nope
The path between the tree and wall is not up but the roots do break the surface on the grass verge.

What do the folks here think ?

Thanks

Gumbo

You’d have to fight the council with an engineers report.
Maybe dig a trial hole inside your boundary and see if there’s any evidence of the tree roots crossing the boundary or through the wall.

onrail

Hard to know tbh. It's definitely possible (or probable) that it was the tree, but difficult to say either way from one photo. Has the path also risen up?

The easiest thing to do in these scenarios is look at the time-frame or sequence of events. i.e. When was the damage noticed? Has the damage worsened as the tree has grown?

RobAMerc

kceire wrote: »

You’d have to fight the council with an engineers report.
Maybe dig a trial hole inside your boundary and see if there’s any evidence of the tree roots crossing the boundary or through the wall.

Thats a good idea, if I dig the area near the wall thats cracked I might be able to hit the root thats causing the issue.

If its not the root though - what else is it likely to be ?
No other wall in the neighbourhood is doing similar.

As I said, you can clearly see the roots breaking the surface of the grass verge but the path between the verge and my wall isn't broken ( although its fairly newly laid )

looksee

The wall appears to have dropped on the right, I suspect it would be more to do with poor (or no) foundations rather than the tree - we have a lot of that situation on the estate where I live. If the footpath was recently put down the wall could have been stressed while that was being done.

Lumen

Wall strength comes from effective thickness, so I'd say the strongest part of that wall is the junction on the left where it's braced by the other wall section.

So it's not surprising that the wall would fail to the right of that junction, if it was being displaced along its length. Proximity to the tree probably coincidental.

I'd poke around under the wall with a length of rebar or whatever and see what the foundations are like.

There's also a thin crack right at the centre of those two major dislocations.

delfagio

Roots tend to spread out as far as the canopy of the tree. Therefor if the tree branches are say 2m from the tree trunk then it's very likely the tree roots are also this far spread out under the ground.

The tree trunk looks quite large suggesting it's a pretty mature tree. The more mature the tree the thicker the roots to hold it down.

Definitely do a few trial digs on the inside of the wall to determine (1) if there's foundation's and (2) if there's roots forcing the wall upwards or inwards

I'd say it's very possible the tree is causing the damage but it's proving this to the local authority. You may need to get a tree specialist company to identify the tree species and they will be able to tell you more about the roots, age of tree, typical diameter of roots, amount of spread, if the roots are deep or shallow etc.