Trees are a wonderful addition to your landscape, it can serve as a shade and can make your house look amazing, but many people fail to realize the disadvantages of them if they aren’t properly maintained or grown too close to the house. Trees can seriously damage your house’s foundation and cause structural damages.
This is especially true in the cases of large trees, it’s roots can extend up to three times the height of the tree so the roots can grow into the foundation of the house if the tree is planted without giving much thought to its location. Another issue is that these trees tend to absorb a lot of water, so it can take a lot of moisture from the soil around the foundation. During rainy times the increased availability of water means that the soil’s moisture content would increase causing the soil to expand and again have the opposite effect during summer times. This constant change in soil structure can further weaken the foundation and its support structures, thus requiring a professional help to fix the weakened structures through different ways, such as reblocking Melbourne or other suitable ways, an expert would be able to determine what kind of repair is necessary to fix the issue.
Just because trees can pose a major threat to your foundation, it doesn’t mean that you should avoid trees altogether and cut down the existing tree right away. As a matter of fact, cutting them down would just make it worse, when the tree dies, the root does too thus causing a change in soil structure.
What steps can you take to deal with the issue?
First and foremost, if you are planning on removing a tree, you should consult an arboriculturist in order to decide the best possible way to remove the tree with minimal damage or you can install root barriers to prevent the roots from reaching your foundation in the first place. You should be able to maintain it properly if you plan on keeping the tree, water it regularly to maintain soil moisture and have your foundation checked every 5 years to check for the need of restumping a house, it’s easier to repair or replace a few stumps than having to repair the whole thing.
If you are newly building this house, then you should tell your architect about wanting to plant a tree, this way they can take this into consideration when building the foundation supports. You should always make it a point to plant it far away from the house, if you don’t have that much space, you should consider planting a smaller tree. Small trees have a smaller less complex root system.