Trenching next to a weeping willow

[Garthegard]

Hi all,

I'm looking for some advice.

At a clients property there are a couple of very large weeping willow (40 year old), I may need to dig a fairly large 2-3ft deep trench about 4 meters away from them (to the left of the farthes away tree in the photo), is this likely to cause serious damage to the tree? If so the trench will obviously have to be reevaluate.

 

Many thanks 

[dumper]

Wouldn’t be my first option 

[Garthegard]

Definitely not my first option, We've explored a lot of options for running a treatment plant output line in lots of places, this is just another idea of where to run it.

[eggsarascal]

are you planning on finger drains or discharging to watercourse? Either way I’d keep it away from that tree if possible. It wouldn’t take long for the roots to infiltrate the riser.

[Canal Navvy]

If its a pumped outlet from a plant then moling under them would be best.

 

If it's a rigid pipe then you'll do less damage going directly for them and accepting some hand digging rather than cutting a whole lot of fine roots with a trench up one side.

 

I would be suggesting that this time of the year is not the best and that it would be better to go for autumn. 

 

 

[Excels1or]

45 minutes ago, Canal Navvy said:

If its a pumped outlet from a plant then moling under them would be best.

 

If it's a rigid pipe then you'll do less damage going directly for them and accepting some hand digging rather than cutting a whole lot of fine roots with a trench up one side.

 

I would be suggesting that this time of the year is not the best and that it would be better to go for autumn. 

 

 

Tunnelling would be first choice 

[eggsarascal]

35 minutes ago, Excels1or said:

Tunnelling would be first choice 

It would want to be deep for tunnelling, on a domestic treatment plant it would cost a fortune, CN has it right with moling, I’d still keep away from the tree if there are other options.

[aspenarb]

As above moling ( ground displacement hammers) would be the way to go, not sure what size service you are running but as a rule of thumb a mole needs to be at a minimum depth of 10x its diameter. We have these up to 125mm diameter, very accurate at over 25mts in previously undug ground conditions,not so clever in landfill or made up ground.

 

Bob

[Deafhead]

Eggs has asked the right question, discharge to a watercourse or finger drain soakaway. If its finger drain then bite the bullet and the trees need to go. I've just spent £13000 plus dancing round the regs updating my system and that's discharge to watercourse.

[Garthegard]

Thanks for all your replies i really appreciate it. It'll be discharging to watercourse from someone else's property (the legality of that is all sorted). 

Unfortunately it has to go past the trees somehow (it needs to go from the lefthand side of the road to about 50ft the other some of that fence). It's just a case of where and how.

I like the moling idea but I'm not familiar with it so don't know if it's suitable, 6" solid plastic pipe needs to be layed.