daltontrees

Damage may be related to a. subsidence due to inadequate foundations b. differential subsidence due to general drought conditions or c. subsidence due to dessication and shrinkage of clays due to tree water uptake. Or all three. The thing that jumps out of the report is that the foundation and BH2 is only 1 metre deep, but 2.1m deep at BH1. This differential alone may be enough to contribute to or be the cause of differential settlement. The shallowness of the BH1 foundation is the absulute minimum NHBC for the situation. But some calculations might show that the foundation is adequate for the distance and species of the trees. Another notable popint is that the borehole logs show the clays to be 'very sandy, very silty', which generally means low shrinkability. Whereas the inadequacy of foundations is not a complete defense to claims for subsidence damage, it may be a contributory defense. Essentially if the house had been built with inadequate foundations it could be for the building designer to prove that they made adequate provision for subsidence risk. Depends on the age of the house too. Based on the report provided, the case has not really been proven. there might also be a follow-up claim for foundation repair costs. There's always a risk that the tree owner is being taken for a mug to pay for stuff that is not their liability. Without independent advice and representaiton the tree owner might never know if this is happening. I hope the tree owner has building insurance. If so, pass the whole thing to the insurers asap. A substantial reduction wold only be effective if the trees are responsible and if it was repeated regularly. forever. Good useful and valuable advice costs money. Sounds like it is worth resisting tree removal initially, particularly as this wold look like admission of liability in a subsequent claim for foundation repair costs. Don't get formally involved is my general advice. And be careful what you share in public.

And it's free from most shops trying to get rid of it. IKEA flatpack boxes are the best though.

Cerioporus would be on a 'stalk', however short. This one appears to be hugging the tree as a bracket.

There's a difference between applying to remove a tree because you don't want it and applying to carry out development that will result in loss of (or risk of loss of) the tree. The former has low chance of succeeding but it depends on the Tree Officer, unfortunately many of them don't care about your living conditions and will stop you doing what you want with your own tree. The latter has some chance but you might be asked to build the dining room on a ring beam and piles so that the roots under it can be retained and irrigated. It can be done. You can only ask or apply. There is a right of appeal too, which if you live long enough might get you a different and more compassionate decision. Subsidence and heave are only really issues if you are in an area of shrinkable clays. They are not widespread in Sussex but there are some. Piling would probably eliminate the risk. The TPO reguations are clear that permitted development rights do not overturn TPO protection.

I see what you are saying but I don't think that's the right interpretation. The first part is removal/ uprooting/destruction while no exemption exists. The second is where an exemption exists. "is uprooted" still connotes a deliberate act rather than 'becomes uprooted', and the identical string of words shoidl probably be interptreted as in pari materia i.e. intended to serve the same purpose. But it's open to interpretation, unfortunately. That said, once a tree has blown over and is perhaps still alive, and is now a legal nuisance by blocking an access, the nuisance exception is still available to remove it. Such fun!

What part of UK (laws and policies vary)?

It appears by its language to apply to trees uprooted or destroyed by the actions of someone (i.e. prohibited acts), but not to natural uprooting or destruction.

I am interested purely on a theoretical basis. I don't really see nuisance beeing that bad a can of worms. If someone has a legal right of access and a tree blocks it, the tree is depriving them of enjoying that right, so it's nuisance. No appplication required for works to tehe xtent that are needed to abate the nuisance. Not an excuse to remove the whole tree of course.

But if it blows over and is not dead, then s.206 surely doesn't apply to it? And if it is blocking a legal access or is now occupying someone else's garden it is a legal nuisance and can be removed under exception?

done

Yes my comment had a target painted on it. But let's stick to her reluctance to incur higher insurance premia...

Let insurers deal with it and involve them as soon as possible. Keep notes and dates of all discussions and events and dated photographs. Also I suggest notifying your purchasing solicitor, as the previous owners may have had knowledge of the issues and may have been under an obligation to disclose them. If nothing else they should check your purchase survey report. The Council's position is generally right but you don't know the history. In any event, a tree report would be better commissioned by your insurers. Your girlfriend's concerns are irrational. Not claiming on insurance makes no sense. Not disclosing stuff to insurers could invalidate your insurance. Is it going to get better all by itself? Is it going to go a way? No? Start doing something about it.

Plastic frames are hopeless, they last about a month until they are sat on or get dropped. It's metal frames or nothing for me. Plastic lenses don't last and they are easily scuffed but it's worth it not to have glass shatter into your eye. I get through about 4 pairs a year.

They're not going to get better. Are thye providing current benefits that mean it's worth keeping them for as long as possible, including with a height reduction? If not, worth considering programming them in for removal and replanting? Please bear in mind that P.s. often follows infection by Armillaria, especially on former broadleaf sites, so maybe think about Armillaria resistant species (of which there are very few). If tehre are wothwhile benefits, it all comes down to detailed assessments tree-by-tree. Lonsdale says to treat infected wood as if it is a void. Als consider where the fruiting is, it can have bearing on which points might fail first.

Nah! Nah, nah, nah.

You can do bat PRF scoping surveys following BS 5896 with only bat awareness training and endoscopy, but you'd need to be qualified and kitted out to climb too. And you have to back off if you cannot reasonably rule out roosting. It's good for when planners ask for bat survys on ridiculously small or yong stuff, and it can be done as a fairly inexpensive bolt-on to BS 5837 or risk surveys. I wouldn't seek out bat survey work on its own though. Probably should, as ecologists froth at the mouth at the very mention of bats and next thing the client's out £1k for all sorts of fancy surveys that could have been ruled out with a torch and binoculars.

I agree with JAG63, contect is everything.

Someone's house, possibly their biggest investment in life and the roof over their heads, is subsiding. It might cost ten grand to fix. They're probably worried sick. Their insurer have taken up the case for them. The tree owner is now worried too and naturally wants to keep the tree. It might cost him thousands if he's unlucky. So he registers for Arbtalk to be able to get some reassurances, presumably thinking that professionally minded and helpful people might be found here. But the second bit of advice he gets here is to piss on the neighbour's carpet anonymously. Sick, and in no situation a proportionate or appropriate action. Seriously, get a grip of yourself. It's you that needs to lighten up (as well as grow up).

Leave it to the insurers. Seriously, don't try and get involved. But here are some considerations. Beech grows slowly at maturity. Mitchell's rule is not always applicable. Since we don't know location, existence of shrinkable clays would be speculation. It doesn't matter that the tree came first. It doesn't matter that the foundations are already inadequate. The TPO shouldn't change things, if the Council tries to get involved in preventing a solution it will take on responsibility for future damage. Pruning won't stop subsidence unless extreme and repeated. If there is tree related subsidence removal would probably cause heave but you wouldn't be responsible for heave damage. Things aren't black and white. You might be only partly responsible. Leave it to the experts. It's a legal minefield. I know what I would do but that's irrelevant.

Idiot! I am sometimes embarrased by the arb indistry when stuff like this is said to members of the public. Grow up.

It's possible tha the bark split has propogated upwards from the nail. I have noticed in Acer platanoides that the bark is really really tight over winter and that even tagging it with a single nail can cause it to split upwards and downwards. I've even seen a tree killed by a tag nail becuase the split extended a metre each way and decay set in. If that nail in the picture is into the wood, the first thing i'd do is remove it.

Yes, walls 1 to 3 are passive. Only wall 4 is an active response to wounding. As Shigo says, pruning is wounding.

Yes decayed and hollow are different things where stem buckling is a possibility. Decayed material will prevent it as long as it's not too soft. If tis is Dryads Saddle it hasn't got to the mushy stage yet. Can't say whether it should have been removed, since the crown is gone and there is no information on Targets. Dacayed roots would definitely be a bigger worry than stem failure.

Agreed, there's always other factors, which can be more important than strength loss through hollowing. It stmulates debate, which is good, but is followed blindly by some as if it is a rule, which is a bad thing. Inserted is what I think is a slightly more intuitive graph of the same subject matter. It shows that as t/R ratio decreases the cross sectional area doesn't decrease so quicky and the strength decreases even more slowly. So at Mattheck's fabled t/R = 0.3, half the cross sectional area is still present and 3/4 of the strength (measured by 'modulus') is still there. The strength doesn't drop to half until only 15% of the stem remains! In reality, stem buckling will probably cause failure first before tensile breakage.

I've never seen any publication dealing with this. Compared to stems, limb growth is partly determined by the amount of woody material needed to support cantilevered loads, determined by limb extension, angle, wind loads and crown damping. It is scientific fact that conifers and broadleafs do this in very different ways too. I suspect the closer they become to vertical the more they will behave like stems. Conifers actively encourage a vertical habit for dominant limbs by putting on extra material on the underside of the limb attachment point. I'd say it's nearly impossible to generalise.