Engineering solution for wall, being pushed over by tree.

[Khriss]

Fell the wall - put fence up - done K

[Khriss]

Tree breathe - alive - big heap rubble no breathe - planet safe - I have spoken . K

[daltontrees]

9 hours ago, Gimlet said:

I'm a bricklayer by trade and I had a similar job to this about ten years ago on a Victorian brick and flint garden wall. Except my trees were ash. 

 

As others have said you have to span the main roots but in my case I did it with an arch because it was appropriate to the period of the wall. Three arches in fact, one of them curving laterally in an S shape. The highest point of the arches were only about 10" above the ground when it was finished. Building those was straightforward (though constructing the turning piece for the curved one was a headache). The slog was digging out. First you need to expose the roots so you can see what exactly it is you've got to span and then the foundations have to be much deeper than the roots so there's no danger of them getting underneath and causing heave again. Mine went down about five feet. Into flint... It cost a fortune but fortunately the client was well off and liked trees and old Victorian walls.

A couple of roots I cut and sealed with stockholm tar. It was a bit of a stab in the dark (and the only non-toxic sealant I could think of that I had to hand) but it seemed to work. Ten years later there has been no further movement. That's not to say there won't be in the future. With big trees you're buying time rather than making permanent fixes and there are no guarantees. 

 

I think I was also lucky to be building on a chalk and flint substrate because that type of ground structure is very resistant to drought shrinkage which is greatly exacerbated by nearby trees. Trees get you both ways, heave and subsidence. 

If you're on a clay, gravel or sand substrate you'll be lucky to stop future movement unless you can dig through it and find some bedrock to build off.

Interesting and useful experience, thanks

[daltontrees]

3 minutes ago, Khriss said:

Fell the wall - put fence up - done K

I expect there are privacy and conservation area reasons for not doing the fence or railing solution which is in all other respects really the obvious choice. And perceived value of tree to its owners versus costs of solution. Removing the tree won't fix the wall, either, so there's possibly goung to be building work anyyway, and it's the extra cost of work due to retaining the tree that needs to go into the equation.

[Khriss]

I would say it is looking through the wrong end of the tube Julian, as long as the tree is sound and has a good life expectancy there , the biodiversity aspect of this aint been served by tree removal or on cost- wall restructuring. as to privacy , I bet client uses WhatsApp............ K

[difflock]

Presumably the excavation for the founds, effectively killed the tree?

[daltontrees]

13 minutes ago, Khriss said:

I would say it is looking through the wrong end of the tube Julian, as long as the tree is sound and has a good life expectancy there , the biodiversity aspect of this aint been served by tree removal or on cost- wall restructuring. as to privacy , I bet client uses WhatsApp............ K

We could bring down the government by getting Trump to project manage the building of the wall...

[Gary Prentice]

8 minutes ago, daltontrees said:

We could bring down the government by getting Trump to project manage the building of the wall...

No way you'd get highways to pay to build it!

[kevinjohnsonmbe]

If LPA have already consented TPO fell (albeit we don’t have detail of the justification case - tree might be fatally flawed elsewhere?) it might be assumed that they value the CA contribution of a (relatively recent) brick wall, over that of a mature tree - or they simply haven’t joined the dots and thought it through very well. ?

 

Its not a ‘bad’ situation for tree owner to be in - it seems they have options rather than problems. 

 

If they want to keep the tree they can - at a cost. 

 

But they have green light to remove if they need to.

 

There’s always the option to put some / all of the money saved from engineering works towards new planting (enough money to allow for choice, well established tree(s) in alternate location) chosen to allow full life-cycle.

 

Good to see options being explored rather than an automatic default to fell, but sometimes the initial reaction is the initial reaction for a reason. 

[daltontrees]

I just re-read the OP. The brick wall is on an old sandstone footing. That explains the lack orf resistanc eto movement of the wall and the legth of wall affected by the movement. I withdraw my suggestion fo a concrete beam. It's too late for that. It probably needs a lot of wall and footings removed, mini-piles inserted wherever possible between roots and a ground beam cast on top then rebuild wall.

 

The LPA may well be in the compensation zone and the approval may partly be a refelction of that.