Our outside excavation line is 20ft from the trunk of these Spruce. The digging will only be a few feet deep at the most as it is a garage. Ignore the steak in pic 4 as that is not the dig line.
I am worried about causing major damage to the trees where we are digging.
I’d rather not move the dig further away but can if absolutely necessary.
Any thoughts?
by ProduceAcceptable163
8 Comments
no thoughts, just appreciating these beauties and also good use of human as banana for scale
if the purchasing reason was the trees, move the dig. if you don’t care do whatever you want really
For wildfire risk alone dont put the house that close?
So is the blue stake the mark? How far away from the edge of the trees’ canopies, if you do continued straight down to the ground?
Are you digging to the pink 3meter offset stake or the blue stake?
I would want to know what your prevailing winds are like. There have been studies (sorry I don’t have the links) that found when a tree falls over after having its root system damaged, it usually falls towards the damaged roots.
Spruce trees don’t have deep root systems, so your 1-2 feet of excavation will be excavating roots. The roots will be spreading out from the base of each tree in a circle with the diameter of that circle being equal to the tree’s height. This means that even if you moved your garage foundation twice as far from the spruce trees, you will probably still encounter roots.
Now, trees can certainly lose some roots and continue living just fine. Once you damage more than 1/4 of a tree’s root system it starts to become too much for the tree to recover. I think you could build that garage and be able to damage less than that critical 1/4 of root system. While you are doing dirt work for the garage foundation, make sure the land is draining water well too. Roots have far less grip when the soil is wet.
Every foot away from the trunk will increase the odds that they survive and thrive. A forester once told me the part of the tree above ground mirrors the size of the roots underground. Id move the garage, and reorient it if needed.
If you live in an area that can be prone to droughts/forest fires, I’d rethink your plan