Most homeowner’s insurance policies do not cover tree root damage to sewer systems. Because homes insurance covers unexpected and inadvertent damage, and tree roots grow over time, this is the case. The water in your sink slowly swirls before seeping down the drain.
Who is responsible for tree root damage to drains?
C, the claimant, owned and lived in a Bournemouth home. D, the defendant, is in charge of a maple tree that is adjacent to the property.
C claimed that her property’s drains became clogged in early 2009, flooding her garden. A check later that year revealed that the tree’s roots had encroached into the sewers, causing the blockage. C stated that she has gotten rid of the roots on multiple occasions.
Despite constantly informing D of the problem, C claims that they have failed to fully address her complaints. As a result, she sued D for damages, claiming nuisance and negligence. Her claim included compensation for the expense of repairing and restoring her home.
C claimed that D allowed an unsuitable tree to be planted in the area, that they failed to take proper precautions to safeguard the surrounding drainage, and that they failed to prevent the roots from encroaching into her property’s drains.
C also sought an order directing D to do something to keep the roots from clogging her drains.
D claimed he was not at fault. Roots will not damage drains, they stated, although they can grow into drains through existing breaches produced by other sources. D denied that the tree was a nuisance or a danger.
The court found that by the spring of 2009, D had reasonably anticipated that the maple tree’s roots would cause clogs in C’s drains. D was then responsible for determining what, if anything, would be reasonable to do about it, taking into account the tree’s amenity value and the expense of resolving the issue.
The court pointed out that local governments are in charge of thousands of trees and that spending must be prioritized. The court determined that felling this maple tree because of a clogged drain would be an excessive response.
The court determined that the roots did not cause the drains to fracture. Closing gaps in a property’s drains is primarily the responsibility of the owner, and this would be the most effective way to remedy the problem. The claim was thrown out.
Comment: Citing the previous decision in Berent v Family Mosaic Housing, the council defended this claim for damages for root invasion on drains (Court Circular, September 2012). In that instance, the Court of Appeal concluded that if a tree has a “real risk” of causing property harm, it should be considered what, if any, action should be taken to mitigate that risk. If the danger of damage is fairly regarded as very low, it may be reasonable to take no action. The court backed the council’s decision to defend the claim on costs grounds, acknowledging that, in the current economic climate of tight budgets, care must be taken to prioritize expenditure; if it had not defended the claim, the floodgates would have opened, requiring councils to deal with thousands of trees for which they are responsible.
Does homeowners insurance cover tree root damage?
If tree roots cause damage to your home, your homeowners insurance coverage should protect you in the event that you need to file a claim. If they advise you to remove a tree as a precaution and you refuse, you could be held liable for any subsequent harm.
How do you get rid of tree roots in your sewer line?
Copper sulfate is a natural herbicide that will kill the little tree roots that have infiltrated your sewer pipes. Half a cup of crystals flushed down the toilet should enough.
How much root damage can a tree take?
The tree’s ability to obtain water and nutrients is harmed when root function is lost. The amount of root material a tree can lose and still survive varies depending on the tree. The amount of root loss that can be sustained depends on the size of the tree and its original health. When compared to a smaller tree, a larger tree can afford to lose more root mass. Moderate root injury is defined as 15 to 30% of the total root surface. It’s only a matter of time before a tree loses more than half of its roots and succumbs to the elements.
How do you know if tree roots are damaging Foundation?
Concrete foundations are rarely seriously harmed by roots. Roots can occasionally push their way through existing fissures, enlarging them. However, as long as you keep your foundation in good shape, you shouldn’t have any problems with tree roots.
If you have extremely strong trees, though, you may have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to witness Mother Nature’s inexorable (if slow) fury unleashed on your home. You’ll notice the following signs:
Roots, once again, rarely cause foundation damage. The same indicators may appear if the soil beneath your home is disrupted by erosion or other circumstances. Before you do anything else, you’ll need to look into the roots. Examine the foundation near your trees to check whether their roots reach out and begin to grow down. If they do, your foundation issues may have been caused by them.
Before you plant trees, be sure you have root barriers in place. Roots are deflected deeper into the earth and away from foundations, pavement, pipes, and other structures by these barriers.
Remove the infringing roots. However, this suggestion should be used with caution. When a tree loses even a little piece of its roots, it can die. This phase should be completed by a tree-trimming expert who has the necessary knowledge to do so without hurting the tree. While you wait for the tree to recuperate, put up root barriers and feed the remainder of the tree.
Remove as much of the root system as possible before cutting down the tree. Root development might sometimes be too fast and widespread for you to regulate. You’ll need to hire a tree removal professional to cut down these trees in order to save your property. Your trees contribute to the aesthetics of your home, but you can’t leave them there if they threaten to ruin it.
What damage can tree roots do?
Normally, more than a third of a tree is buried beneath the earth. The roots are significant in a number of ways, despite the fact that they are buried. Fine roots collect the water and nutrients that the tree requires to grow and thrive, and they are transported to the stem by coarse, woody roots. The coarse roots also serve as a support for the tree, preventing the crown from being overturned by the wind. The soil is held together by a network of fine and coarse roots, which also helps to prevent soil erosion and landslides on steep slopes.
Tree-care specialists are becoming increasingly aware of the dangers of tree root damage from a variety of urban maintenance and construction activities. Roots are killed by physical damage during cable and pipe laying, road changes, and soil compaction or regrading during building construction, in addition to chemical harm such as de-icing road salt and herbicides.
Tree roots must grow through a substrate that is frequently more debris than soil in city streets, where they must survive in the confined area between buildings and roadways, under concrete pavements. Surprisingly, roots not only survive in this adverse environment, but they also explore its limits, pushing against the limitations on a regular basis.
How do tree roots interact with pavements?
Roots can deform and shatter man-made structures such as buildings, pipelines, and pavements as they grow and thicken within their limited space, causing harm to many tree-lined roadways.
Each year, the woody roots thicken. The growth rings in woody roots are just as well defined as those in the stem in temperate regions of the planet. Shallow roots sprouting just beneath the pavement are eventually pushed closer to the surface by this secondary thickening. Roots can exert enough energy to bend asphalt or even concrete as they expand, and they can readily shift slabbed paving. And as roots continue to develop after a surface fails, the upheaval grows. The majority of the damage is located within 2 meters of the tree, partially due to the rapid growth of this area of the root system, and partly due to the ‘buttressing’ of roots close to the stem. With increasing distance from the tree, the roots branch and taper, becoming smaller and less damaging. However, at greater distances from the trunk, considerable damage can still be seen.
Ignoring pavement degradation is not a feasible option, especially if there is a risk of injury to pedestrians, thus pavements are repaired after grinding down or eliminating roots. Unfortunately, highway engineers sometimes also insist on the entire removal of any trees causing evident damage.
During road work to install or repair utilities, street tree roots are frequently injured. Trenching activities near pavements can be extremely harmful, resulting in the abolition of huge numbers of street trees. Severing roots fully along one side of an already constricted root system drastically limits a tree’s ability to absorb water and nutrients, facilitates root disease infection, and makes the tree much less sturdy right away.
It is vital to understand how root systems develop and interact with their surroundings in order to build and manage hard surfaces around street trees in order to minimize root damage:
Root architecture
A multitude of factors influence how tree roots develop, including soil type and structure, soil water content, and temperature. Trees can be matched to the soil or soil conditions can be changed to produce more suitable root systems. With this in mind, it’s crucial to think about how tree root systems grow, how they respond to soil conditions and barriers, and how rooting patterns differ between species.
How do roots explore and exploit the soil?
Trees take advantage of as much soil as possible by spreading their roots out in all directions, and they reproduce where the conditions for growth are best. Because it contains the highest nutrient concentrations, sufficient aeration, and warm temperatures, soil near the surface is perfect for root growth. As a result, the majority of tree roots are found near the surface. Condensation of moisture on the underside of pavements (or sidewalks) makes the soil near the surface particularly conducive for growth in places of the world with high temperatures and minimal rainfall. During the growing season, deeper soil layers have less nutrients, lower oxygen levels, and cooler temperatures, as well as being considerably more difficult to penetrate due to increased compaction.
Although roots grow in all directions, those in the best conditions grow the longest and thickest. So roots are mostly found near the soil surface in the most advantageous conditions, not because they deliberately seek out these environments, but because these are the roots that develop and thicken the fastest.
Structural roots
The tree’s fastest-growing roots, known as surface roots, thicken quickly to form the structural root system that keeps it upright. Trees are sustained by a root system that consists of three to eleven massive structural roots. If a tree is to remain stable, these must develop as equally as possible around it. If a tree has grown very few structural roots, or if one or more have been destroyed during trenching or road construction, it may be vulnerable to windthrow during storms.
The number of structural roots has an impact on pavement degradation as well. When roots grow close to the surface, a tree’s biomass (root matter) allocated to four major roots will inflict far more harm than if it is distributed evenly across, say, eight major roots. Because the slower spread of tiny roots can be accommodated rather readily by soil compression beneath the pavement, this is the case.
Barriers to controlling street tree roots
Large roots are frequently found near the surface where soil below the base of a barrier is compacted or wet. The largest roots, however, tend to stay deep in the soil if it is loose and thoroughly aerated. As a result, properly built barriers can successfully deflect roots, but soil conditions suitable to root growth in the region below the barrier’s base must be provided.
Rather than simply diverting roots, some commercially available barriers trap root tips in holes in cloth or mesh that do not extend with the root, effectively stopping them from growing. Other products inhibit growth by gently releasing chemicals. Where roots have a high tendency to return to the surface, certain types of barriers may be more useful.
Minimising damage during road work and trenching
Recommendations for trenching around street trees (NJUG 2007) divide the area surrounding trees into three zones:
If excavation is absolutely necessary within the forbidden zone, roots should be safeguarded and mechanical excavation should be avoided. Even if digging is permissible in the designated zone, roots should be safeguarded. Trenchless techniques should be used wherever possible; if trenches are unavoidable, they should be broken rather than continuous. To avoid root or stem damage and needless soil compaction, backfilling and other operations near the tree should be conducted. The National Joint Utilities Group has a complete set of guidelines.
Designing space for trees into urban developments
The easiest way to avoid problems between tree roots and the needs for pavements and services in urban streets is to design in room for street trees from the start. There are a variety of materials and systems available to offer the space required for tree roots to flourish without becoming a nuisance or subject to damage.
Street tree root excavation
In a tree-lined downtown street, larger trees were inspected. This was an asphalt pavement in Sheffield, England, that had been destroyed by 30-year-old cherry trees. Using an air tool called a Soil Pick, the pavement was lifted and roots were extracted.
The roots were meticulously mapped and studied after they were exposed. The cherry trees in this study had two to five major roots, but their spread was generally limited by the road on one side and a wall on the other. Because of soil compaction, none of the root systems excavated in the study had grown deeper than 60 cm. The majority of pavement cracks were produced by roots larger than 10 cm in diameter. Large surface roots, as expected, have caused the most serious sidewalk damage. But more surprisingly, fast-growing roots as deep as 40 cm had also caused harm. When roots were just below the surface, pavement cracks followed the underlying root path.
Effectiveness and risks of pavement repair
The pavement had been repaired in the excavated street by chiselling down roots that had caused damage before re-laying the asphalt. This proved to have only short-term benefits, and in the long run, it may have exacerbated the condition. Damaged roots had calloused around the chiseled region, causing the new sidewalk to be lifted over a broader area. Complete removal of massive roots during sidewalk restorations, on the other hand, saves repeated damage but compromises stability. Both techniques of repair carry the danger of introducing disease. In some circumstances, removing and replacing harmful trees with less aggressive ones may be the best option, but whenever possible, solutions should be sought to prioritize tree protection. To minimize damage and safeguard the tree, the best way is to create and maintain hard landscaping.
National Joint Utilities Group Guidelines
NJUG is a non-profit organization dedicated to (2007). Utility Apparatus in Close Proximity to Trees: NJUG Guidelines for Planning, Installation, and Maintenance (Volume 4). London’s National Joint Utilities Group
Additional information
J. Claridge (ed) (1997). The Present and Future of Arboricultural Practice Amenity Trees Research 6. Department of the Environment, Transport, and Regions, London.
M.P. Coutts, C.C.N. Nielsen, and B.C. Nicoll (1999). The structural root system of conifers develops symmetry, rigidity, and anchoring. 115 in Plant and Soil 217.
B. Nicoll (2002). The root cause of sidewalk deterioration is urban trees fighting back. Tree Care Industry, vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 3639.
B.C. Nicoll and A. Armstrong (1997). The Root Architecture of Street Trees and Pavement Damage SILN 138/97/SILN Arboriculture Research and Information Note. Arboriculture Advisory and Information Service, Farnham, UK.
B.C. Nicoll and A. Armstrong (1998). Pavement degradation and root architecture of Prunus root systems in a city street. 259270 in Arboricultural Journal.
Direct damage by urban tree roots: paving the way for less destructive street trees, Nicoll, B.C. and Coutts, M.P. (1997). The Present and Future of Arboricultural Practice For the Amenity Trees Series, I did some research. Department of the Environment, Transport, and Regions, London.
B.C. Nicoll and M.P. Coutts (1998). Rigid Barriers Deflection of Tree Roots 143/98/SILN Arboriculture Research and Information Note Arboricultural Advisory and Information Service, Farnham, UK.
B.C. Nicoll and D. Ray (1996). Tree root systems adapt their growth in response to wind and site circumstances. 899904 in Tree Physiology.
D. Patch and B. Holding (2007). To Development, Through the Trees. Tree Advice Trust, Farnham, UK. Arboricultural Practice Note (APN) 12.
Smith, J. Roberts, N. Jackson, and J. Roberts (2006). In The Built Environment, Tree Roots Amenity Trees Research 8. The Stationery Office is based in London.
B. Tobin, J. Ermák, D. Chiatante, F. Danjon, A. Di Iorio, L. Dupuy, L. Eshel, A. Jourdan, C. Kalliokoski, T. Laiho, R. Nadezhdina, N. Nicoll, B. Pagès, L. Silva, J. Silva, J. Silva, J. Silva, J. Silva, J. Silva, J. Silva, J. (2007). Towards tree root system developmental modeling. Plant Biosystems, vol. 141, no. 3, pp. 481501.
Can tree roots cause plumbing problems?
Simply put, your sewer drain system is at risk of being hacked. Tree roots that are thirsty will naturally gravitate toward any leaks in your water or sewer pipes. Tree roots infiltrate your pipes when they discover a leak in sewer lines. This results in clogged water lines, pipe damage, unhealthy conditions, and often high repair costs.
Are trees covered on house insurance?
Yes, your homeowners insurance will cover damage caused by fallen trees or branches (whether to the structure or its contents). The only exception is if the harm occurs while doing routine maintenance (e.g. by a tree surgeon). The expense of removing any component of the fallen tree that is above ground is also covered.
How much does it cost to get roots out of pipes?
It will cost you between $100 and $600 to have a tree root removed from your sewer system. A sewer camera inspection will set you back an additional $350.
How quickly does RootX work?
What is the length of time it takes to apply RootX? Regular sewage maintenance personnel can treat up to 400 feet of main line in 10-30 minutes utilizing the FDU 100 or 300 foam dispersal units in a typical application.