Whitebeam roots

How deep would you expect me to find Whitebeam roots? The tree is 8m tall and I am checking about 6m from the trunk.

The reason I ask is I have my insurance company and my local council arguing over what has caused the subsidence on my porch and I am can't sell the house until it is sorted.

Instead of waiting for them to have a theoretical argument for months I am going to take action next week. I intend to dig a trench in front of my porch and see if there are any roots, we can then have a discussion based on facts rather than theories.

Hence my original question, how deep do I dig ...

Cheers
Catherine

P.S. we already dug a trench 1.5 meters deep to fix the damaged drains and didn't find a single root.

 

The roots don't usually spread further than the spread of the branches but building regulations have stupid worse case scenario diagrams for each species.

I had to underpin the whole of my house because of trees the other side of the road. Despite the fact that the water board had laid a new main in between us and them, severing any roots that would have been that adventurous.

 

Hi Catherine

Roots of any tree will reach as far as they need to, and as far as ground conditions allow. Generally 90% of tree roots are found within the top 3' of soil, but can spread out quite far in order to attain water, nutrients, stability etc. A 1.5m ditch with no sign of roots wouldn't necessarily indicate to me that you were far beyond the root plate, as roots don't always grow symmetrically. As Ziggy mentioned, insurers use a cobbled together system that you will just have to be patient with, because no-one can tell 'em anything!!

 

Cheers HA,

Glad its not just me that finds the system obsurd.

During the underpinning i found about 4 roots, the thickness of a pencil.

Was that really worth spending £120,000?:DOH: