distance from houses

I'm currently dealing with my HOA when it comes to trees. We have millions of trees here because our development is surrounded by parkland. The original owners added their own trees to these tiny lots, many of which were unsuitable such as poplars, silver maples and white oaks which have now grown to immense sizes and are in some cases inches from the houses. Unfortunately some of these people don't understand that these trees can be dangerous. I remember reading somewhere that when a tree is sited it should be no closer than 1.5-2 times its mature height from a structure. I can't find it in writing, does anyone have any information on this?

Thanks in advance
Yehudith

Those rules apply to all trees except White Oaks. ;)

Do you know where I can get documentation for that? I've been trying all over.

Thnks

I haven't followed that rule, but I also haven't planted the poor choices such as those you've mentioned. I guess a possible exception would be the white pine but that would be it...man if everyone planted as you have described, many people would be left with only 1 or 2 trees on their lot.

A lot depends on the soil. If you have shrinkable clay soils, the trees' roots can cause the clay to shrink by taking water out of it (think like the cracks in a dried-up lake bed), leaving the house foundations unsupported and liable to subsidence. This applies particularly with deep-rooted trees like larger-growing poplars, willows, oaks and elms where the roots can go below the foundations, less so with shallow-rooted trees like beech and birch. With deep-rooted trees, they should not be grown within 30 metres of a building on clay soils unless the building has very deep foundations (typically more than 2 metres deep).

On sandy soils, which don't shrink when water is abstracted by tree roots, the dangers are far less.

Good reading: Cutler & Richardson, Tree Roots and Buildings, 2nd ed. Longman Scientific & Technical 1989. ISBN 0-582-03410-8

Otherwise, ask an independent ISA-registered arboricultural consultant for advice.

Resin


This message was edited Oct 16, 2013 8:14 PM

Yehudith, I have a couple of suggestions for you:
I would ask an arborist to come give you a free assessment of the health of not only your trees, but also of neighbors' trees that could fall on your property, and also give you advice on what could be done to minimize the chances of major storm damage to your trees.
For example, a tree company cabled 2 of my mature maples with split leaders. They told me after the fact that if they had cabled it, one of the huge split leaders of a white pine would not have fallen on my house. That white pine was the one tree in my yard I was NOT worried about because I was convinced that it would fall in the space between our and our neighbors house. Unfortunately, a 60 mph gust of wind from the north sent it the other way.
Selective pruning might make a tree less likely to fall during high winds.
If an arborist assesses that a tree is likely to fall or drop large limbs for whatever reason (almost dead tree, prior storm damage, etc.), there could be liability considerations for the tree's owner. If you don't know already what Maryland state laws are concerning trees that fall across property lines, I would find out. I believe that Maryland law requires the tree's owner to pay for the removal of anything in their neighbor's yard. I'm not sure who has to pay for repairing the neighbor's property. Virginia law is different.

I forgot to add that I hope arming yourself with the above facts will help you reason with your HOA in case there are problem trees around you. The HOA probably would have huge liability costs, and maybe face costly lawsuits, if they barred removal of a tree with documented structural problems.

Yehudith, I just wanted to clarify what Muddy said.

According to Maryland law, the tree owner is *not* responsible for any damages if it falls on a neighbor's property.

However, if the owner knew that the tree was diseased/likely to fall and neglected to remove it, then s/he may be held responsible.

In many parts of Silver Spring, there are very tall mature trees that are much closer than 2x its height from a structure.

ssgardener

That's the issue in our community. We just had the final meeting and my commitee was able to change the policy despite the tree huggers. Home owners still need to get permission to cut down trees, but we added specific situations in which the review board has to give them permission to do it. If they chop it down anyway they can only levy a token fine. I can live with that. So many of our residents don't even have a backyard for their kids to play in because of the trees or because of the roots can't grow a decent garden. I think the new rule treads the path between the clear cutters and the tree huggers.

Yehudith

That's good news, yehudith! We have a lot of overgrown, diseased, and poorly pruned trees in my neighborhood, but no HOA. I like the freedom of not having to deal with a board, but I wish something could be done about the sickly street trees. It took over a year and several phone calls for the power company to prune the dead branches from the tree in front of my house.

You might want to see who owns the land on which the street trees are growing. In my neighborhood, the Virginia Dept. of Transportation owns the strip of land between the sidewalks and the VDOT-owned streets, which includes all the minor residential streets. VDOT has the right to prune or remove anything planted in that area.
I contacted VDOT about street trees that were obstructing traffic, and they pruned them even though it was the homeowners' responsibility. It can't hurt to find out what MD regs and laws are.

Muddy

Here in Silver Spring its either PEPCO or Montgomery County that's responsible for the street trees. Unfortunately PEPCO let the trees go for ever so everytime there's a bad storm we loose power for days if not weeks. The county will come after you with an M1 locked and loaded if you even have the thought of cutting down or anything else to a street tree. Its a matter of beg, beg, beg and hope, hope, hope.

Ugghh!! Well, I hope you Silver Spring residents can at least get officials to cut down trees that might fall on people or cars. Good luck!