Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Is this a 30m tree?

Supposedly the builder has discovered a 30m tall tree in our neighbours front yard? This seems to have popped up from nowhere. When we first got our site quote from the builder they highlighted a tree to the South of our house that they think could cause a problem (see tree highlighted in green). They said that this tree was 15m tall and we needed to put 2m deep blinding concrete (low grade concrete) beneath our foundation to act as a root barrier. Highlighted with pink highlighter on our plan was a line of where this was to occur.
At $5000 plus other expenses for this I was a little concerned. Also the fact that the tree that actually overhung our soon to be garage (red circle above) was ignored.

I brought this up with the sales guy and he said he would look into it. Oh oh...

Now apparently the tree in the front yard of our neighbour to the North is 30m tall and we need blinding concrete almost over our entire house, oh yeah and an extra $10,000. Now I am no Einstein but I don't think that tree is 30m. Here's another view.
Now I agree it is a little higher than the power pole and maybe as much as 3 times the height of a house. I might give them 12m.

Just as a bit more ammunition we found that the local council publishes lists of significant trees. Our Northern neighbours happen to have one of these (the one highlighted in blue in the top image). Luckily the builders didn't notice this, however it is a bit further away and according to the council it is only 15m tall, and happens to be taller than all of the other trees around. Sort of knocks the 30m on its head. See below for an extract from the council report:

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