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Protecting your trees during construction
Published 6:00am Sunday, September 6, 2009Any kind of construction, no matter how small, can adversely affect your trees and consequently, the value of your property. A wooded lot can cost 20 percent more than a bare lot, so it pays to take special care when working around trees.
If you have a large stand of trees that have matured together, you need to take special care when removing any of them. This type of stand, work together as a unit so that the trees inside the group have been protected from weather, like strong wind and excess sunlight. Taking down the outermost trees and suddenly exposing the protected trees can cause them to die, or at the very least, be shocked to the point of stunting for some time.
Some obvious damage that can be caused during construction are torn branches, wounds to trunks and torn bark. However, the most lasting damage may be what you don’t see — root damage.
Unlike carrots, trees don’t have a tap root. If you have ever seen a tree tipped out of the soil by a storm, you will see several large structural roots, then millions of small feeder roots. These small roots extend about one third times the height of the tree and go down about 16 to 18 inches. This is why you don’t water a tree at the trunk but at or beyond the drip line, as that is where it is able to absorb the water.
Cutting a structural root also cuts many of the small feeder roots. Now the tree is less able to absorb water and nutrients and may become structurally unsound. In other words, a lot more apt to take out your garage in a high wind. If you need to have underground lines installed, try to get the installer to go under the tree rather than trenching over the tree’s roots.
Another tree killer is soil compaction. This can happen if a trunk or any heavy machine drives under or even near a large tree. Piling building material under a tree may protect it from the sun, but it also compacts the soil. All plants need pore space — space filled with water and air so the roots can grow and feed. Compacting the soil reduces the pore spaces. Heavy weights can even crush some roots.
Another no-no is adding soil over the tree’s roots. As little as two to six inches of added soil over a mature tree’s root system can suffocate the roots it covers. The roots no longer are able to absorb water easily.
It is quite simple, although work to prevent tree damage during construction. Fence the tree right out to the drip line. Do not let your contractor store material inside the fence or, even worse, pour the rinse from the cement trunk there. You have to write a contract with steep fines for violating those rules.
A mature tree can add up to $3,000 to the value of your lot and two trees can lead to a hammock.
