Is my tree unsafe?

tree novice

Im hoping someone can help.... Im wondering if our tree is safe.

We have a huge old camphor laurel tree right near our fence on our block. Our neighbours landscapers dug a trench to make way for their new garden bed and also had a tree guy come and cut away some roots. They were approx one metre away from the trunk and 500ml-1metre down. One clump of about three before they spread and one other to the side of those.

Is our tree now a safety hazard?

Eric Frei

Welcome, and thanks for choosing Australias largest and busiest tree forum.

There's many factors.

Have a read of this thread, it will give you an idea of what things we need to know and assess.

A start is pictures, dimensions etc.

Help help -- bigger than ben hur

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tree novice

Here are two pics we took a while ago of the tree. They have already filled in their garden bed and i don't have a photo what they had cut, just my memory of what I saw over their fence.
Also, we are currently building a new house on our block when we started we had to have a big hole dug to put in our water tank and sandstone is only a metre or so down. So I presume the tree roots are all fairly shallow.

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Eric Frei

Camphor trees are pretty tough customers, and if their roots are cut clean and straight there's a strong possibility they will regrow (to be kept moist and covered with soil).

How's the canopy looking, generally you'd expect to see some die back in correlation to the sides the roots were cut.

Also camphor's have buttress and surface spreading roots, recent studies have shown that buttress roots on the fall side reduce blow overs, conventional thought was that tension roots are paramount however in extreme weather the buttresses opposite the wind are important too.

http://www.treeworld.info/f42/buttre...html#post65178

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tree novice

No sign of die back in canopy yet, but cuts were only made a few weeks ago.
We are mainly concerned with whether the tree is likely to fall and therefore pose a danger to our kids, house and us etc. A few people seem to think that it would be a danger. Was hoping to get a few more professional opinions. If it is dangerous we will have to apply to council to have it removed.

Eric Frei

Ring and find this out first because what happens in some councils is when you request removal of a protected tree they send an officer of theirs out to assess whether it should stay or not .... not all councils do this, never know your luck till you try.

Should councils (govt) assess private trees | poll | Vote Yes or No

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Sean Freeman

Best achieved by engaging a professional to visit your property and assess the tree in person.

The Tree Whisperer

Tree Novice,
In essence yes! you tree has now been seriously compromised, if not in stability at least in health. A trees root system and associated mass are essential for growth and vitality of the tree. there is a littkle thing we arborists call Critical root Ratio (CRR) this is the area of roots that are critical to the health and vitality of a tree. Any loss greater than 10% of this CRR will have significant impacts on your tree.

A couple of things you will need to do is to measure the DBH (Diametre at breast height) of the trunk this is usually done at about 1200-1400mm from the ground. The CRR is then calculated as a circular area with a radius of 1.8m for every 100mm in trunk DBH i.e if your trunk has a DBH of 400mm then the radius of the CRR will be 7.2m with a total CRR of 163m.

So calcu;ate your CRR then establish how much of this has been lost then do the math to work out the percentage of loss.

if it is greater then 10% you should engage a consulting arborist (there are a few of us around) and have a report done as your tree will suffer and your neighbour should be paying for the repair/ remediation of the tree. BE AWARE!!! damage from this type of occurrence may take several years to truly show as the tree has stored energy reserves in its trunk to utilise however once that depletes over a few years the tree will start to show signs of disease and die back, so if you collect all the evidence now while its all fresh this will help should you pursue litigation down the track

The other thing is to check your local council to see if you have a tre preservation order in place. as the damage you describe constitutes potential destruction of your tree, which should be investigated by them as an illegal event.