Tree root barriers and your home’s foundation

Tree Root barriers protect your home and your trees and you probably have seen situations where the roots of trees can tear up a sidewalk, now imagine that happening to your home at its foundational level. 

And while we love trees and it helps in beautifying our homes, providing shade, and sometimes even increasing the home value, we also want to make sure to manage the roots so that the trees are protected from issues of it interfering with a home’s foundation and therefore requiring us to cut it. Additionally we also want to protect our home’s foundation from issue that may cause instability. However when installing a root barrier we want to ensure that we don’t install a barrier that makes it hard for the soil to drain, or that kills the tree, or cause it some other unforeseen issue. So let’s look at some different types of root barriers.

Because we are dealing with a tree, which is a biological product, and we are dealing with soil and your foundation, these three things really force us to develop solutions that ensure that they all play well together. For instance we don’t want to put a barrier that prevents water and moisture in the ground from properly draining, because this is going to cause issues for the home’s foundation.

Solid Barrier Root Barriers

We can use a solid barrier panel which can be made of corrosion-resistant material, also we can use plastic or a material like fiberglass, now these create what I like to call an impenetrable wall that makes it  sometimes very difficult for water to adequately move through the soil. and we don’t want that so sometimes we have to consider several solutions.

Permeable Root Barriers

Just as the name implies, permeable root barriers provide that flexibility whereby we have an effective barrier between a tree’s roots and a home’s foundation however the permeability of the barrier allows moisture and water to move through the soil. Thereby giving us the best of both worlds and ensuring that we are accomplishing what we set out to accomplish.

Tree root barriers and your home’s foundation

Influence is the name of the game and when we are installing root barriers between your trees and your home, there are a couple of things we can do. You can initially start the redirection of a tree’s roots by tilling the soil and loosening it in order to help the tree produce a stronger rout system and move it towards the loose soil. Think of it like this, soil that is loose makes it easier for roots to move through. So if we loosen the soil away from the home’s foundation, that is where the roots will be influenced to move through.

Influence the root system

Mixing soil with other organic matter like compost, and minerals, and rich soil can make a certain part of the soil more attractive to the root system thereby influencing the route to move in that direction. So these are things you can do to influence a tree’s root system and make it easier for the installation of a root barrier. And it typically you want to do these things when you are planting the tree, because afterwards then it is probably too late for the management through that particular means however there are other ways and that is when you call a foundation repair company like us, and we can offer you the available Solutions and installed a root barrier that protects a mature tree.

Root barrier considerations

A couple of things to consider when we are installing root barriers are to really take into effect how flexible the root of trees can be. So when we are installing our tree root barrier we want to make sure that it is above the surface of the soil because sometimes roots can grow above and also we want to make sure that we have enough depth so that the tree roots don’t simply grow under the root barrier. Because we’ve been working on these types of issues for a lot of the people who come to us, we’ve seen all kinds of scenarios and can mitigate and prevent these issues. But even when you are experiencing tree root problems, we can step in and stop it