I have a giant sequoia about 15 feet from my house that I have cut back to make it a sequoia bush. It is about 10 years old. It is planted over my water system from the main line to my house. My question is Will the roots hurt or break my water pipes going to the house? Should I try to move it?
Wait for others to chime in, but I'll bet the proper thing to do is to remove it and replace it with something more appropriate for the site. Assuming you were planning to top it, see : http://www.treesaregood.com/treecare/topping.aspx
I'll chime in. Anything planted over service connections, lines or components should be shrub size or smaller in my experience. Over the years in my own home & with residential buildings of various type in my professional capacity, I have come to realize that sooner or later all these services will need repair or replacement. For example, many of the municipal water connections made in the 1970's in the lower mainland are needing replacement. If there is a large tree (whether or not it caused the problem itself) in the vicinity, the job goes from an annoying but predictable expense to a much larger project. Don't plant forest trees on small lots, over septic fields, service lines or have your house within about 1/2 the fall-line of the mature specimen. Stick to smaller stuff that won't turn into a major problem down the years. I've been saying this for decades, but remain unsure whether anyone listerns. We nearly all love trees, but everything grows bigger on the West Coast, you know!
Big trees also make the house look smaller and less impressive. Unless you can manage the illusion of it being a cottage on a larger property. The flip side is imposing houses are not made more approachable by small trees or the absence of trees. It's usually a question of coordination of scale: small trees planted around small houses, big trees around big ones. Big houses (and other dominating buildings) in particular really need some framing by adequately sized trees in order for them not to look like fortresses or prisons etc.
