Hi All, I recently purchased a fixer-upper home and need to do some major remodelling. In order to get permits and a completion certificate, the municipality wants to backfill around a section of the foundation and add about a foot of fill material, which needs to be level out for at least 6 feet, and then feathered. The downside of all this is that on one side of the house, I have two tall pines which are about 9 and 7 feet away from the foundation. I believe these are as old as the house (mid 60's) if not more. It looks as though the backfill at a trunk will be about 6" or more. To complicate the situation further, the grade drops off at these trees, so they're also holding a 10 foot high hillside intact. There is no way to get around grading the lot, so is there a way to save the trees and keep them healthy despite this? Thanks Kartik
No, you cannot count on cutting and filling beneath trees not being detrimental. Maybe yours will tolerate what you are going to do, maybe not. Tree wells etc. do not take care of the problem. If you are stuck with cutting and filling there you then either have to gamble that the trees will not fail and fall as a result, or have the trees removed now. Apart from the re-grading question, keep in mind that every tree fails and comes down at some point. The only variable is when that might happen, in 70 days or 70 years. Maybe you don't want to have those trees right there anyway, even without the site alterations that are coming.
