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My experience with UK trees is that Victorian housing does not have foundation, so their roots can and do make the walls moving, crack up floors, etc. Cracks on

by aries1980 7y ago

My experience with UK trees is that Victorian housing does not have foundation, so their roots can and do make the walls moving, crack up floors, etc. Cracks on the walls means bad insulation (apart unstable structure to live in), hence I am not sure the assessment in the article is thorough enough. I am not sure what would be the solution to this, apart from demolishing the old buildings and build new ones up that satisfy modern standards.

317070 7y ago
Double glazing would already go a long distance in London. I would not blame the trees when a lot of houses have windows with cracks you can see outside through. Let alone the single glazing everywhere.
- aries1980 7y ago
  The problem with having just replacing the windows is that heat can escape easily through thermal bridges and induce even more molds: https://www.echotape.com/blog/why-thermal-bridging-and-thermal-breaks-matter-in-construction/ https://www.echotape.com/blog/why-thermal-bridging-and-therm...
- Ntrails 7y ago
  My landlord put in double glazing before I moved in, it is assuredly better than the previous situation - but there is still on hell of a draft coming from somewhere...
  - gerdesj 7y ago
    Have a look at the floor for draughts. Our old methods of construction were pretty shocking. Look out for gaps underneath the skirting boards. Our walls are usually a double skin of brick and there will be air bricks to allow the gap between to dry out. Then you have floor/ceiling joists, probably with gaps around their ends. On the joists you will have floorboards, again with gaps between them. On the boards you will probably have some rubbish underlay and then carpet. Around the edges the walls will be finished with skirting boards. Over time the floors will sag. You only report "one" hell of a draught coming from somewhere. There will be lots of draughts!
  - gshdg 7y ago
    Do your modern double-glazed window frames sit in wood paneling in a brick wall? It's likely the wood has shrunk over time, and there are drafts either between the windows and the wood, or between the wood and the brick.
hardlianotion 7y ago
Some Victorian houses don’t have foundations, but this is not the norm. There is often a problem with cracking, but this is often to do with the river plain that London is built on (many rivers are actually now subterranean now). Changes in water content of the soil has an undermining effect on foundations.
- aries1980 7y ago
  > Some Victorian houses don’t have foundations, but this is not the norm University of West England seems to disagree: https://fet.uwe.ac.uk/conweb/house_ages/elements/print.htm https://fet.uwe.ac.uk/conweb/house_ages/elements/print.htm > Many local authorities were slow in adopting Model Bye-laws; even where they did, building control was fairly lax. This meant that the nature and quality of foundations varied considerably. The graphics below show typical foundations at the end of the 1800s. The depths varied according to circumstances but generally they were shallower than their modern counterparts. This means, they are shallower than other parts of the world of the same era. Also: https://newmanbuildingsolutions.com/bowing-walls/residential-victorian-properties-part-1/ https://newmanbuildingsolutions.com/bowing-walls/residential... > The Victorians often didn’t use this method of construction for foundations and instead used to build shallow footings out of a course of 5-6 bricks in a ‘pyramid’ shape spreading the load across the ground and in some cases the footings are no more than 200mm’s deep. > [...] The problems with the shallow foundations arise due to the shrinkage and heave of the clay soils that are found across London and the South East So the roots. Energy-wise the lack of insulation on the foundation is also an issue. Heat can escape downwards as well. (And slugs, rats, spiders up, but that's an other story.)
  - hardlianotion 7y ago
    I don't see a contradiction! And yes, trees have a really big effect on the soil moisture content.
- gerdesj 7y ago
  My aunt and uncle's house has 1642 written on it, which was when it was last rebuilt from scratch. For the last few hundred years or so it has been simply patched with more mud, straw and horse piss. It too has no foundations to speak of unless you count the rather hard earth on which it stands. I tried smacking it with a lump hammer and once I'd stopped vibrating, I could not see a dent in it. One day I'll get a decent sized masonry bit out and see just how hard it really is but I suspect it is harder or at least tougher than the modern concrete base in my 1920s job. Back on topic, we have a 50' walnut tree in our garden that we tend to. It gets a feed every other year. Next door is a 100+ acre park, mostly woodland: oak, ash, beech, horse chestnut etc. It is really starting to look lovely after a 10 year plan to get rid of the laurels, which were planted about 150 odd years back but have turned out to be invasive, poisonous and left unchecked nearly took over completely.

317070 7y ago

Double glazing would already go a long distance in London. I would not blame the trees when a lot of houses have windows with cracks you can see outside through. Let alone the single glazing everywhere.

aries1980 7y ago
The problem with having just replacing the windows is that heat can escape easily through thermal bridges and induce even more molds: https://www.echotape.com/blog/why-thermal-bridging-and-thermal-breaks-matter-in-construction/ https://www.echotape.com/blog/why-thermal-bridging-and-therm...
Ntrails 7y ago
My landlord put in double glazing before I moved in, it is assuredly better than the previous situation - but there is still on hell of a draft coming from somewhere...
- gerdesj 7y ago
  Have a look at the floor for draughts. Our old methods of construction were pretty shocking. Look out for gaps underneath the skirting boards. Our walls are usually a double skin of brick and there will be air bricks to allow the gap between to dry out. Then you have floor/ceiling joists, probably with gaps around their ends. On the joists you will have floorboards, again with gaps between them. On the boards you will probably have some rubbish underlay and then carpet. Around the edges the walls will be finished with skirting boards. Over time the floors will sag. You only report "one" hell of a draught coming from somewhere. There will be lots of draughts!
- gshdg 7y ago
  Do your modern double-glazed window frames sit in wood paneling in a brick wall? It's likely the wood has shrunk over time, and there are drafts either between the windows and the wood, or between the wood and the brick.

hardlianotion 7y ago

Some Victorian houses don’t have foundations, but this is not the norm. There is often a problem with cracking, but this is often to do with the river plain that London is built on (many rivers are actually now subterranean now). Changes in water content of the soil has an undermining effect on foundations.

aries1980 7y ago
> Some Victorian houses don’t have foundations, but this is not the norm University of West England seems to disagree: https://fet.uwe.ac.uk/conweb/house_ages/elements/print.htm https://fet.uwe.ac.uk/conweb/house_ages/elements/print.htm > Many local authorities were slow in adopting Model Bye-laws; even where they did, building control was fairly lax. This meant that the nature and quality of foundations varied considerably. The graphics below show typical foundations at the end of the 1800s. The depths varied according to circumstances but generally they were shallower than their modern counterparts. This means, they are shallower than other parts of the world of the same era. Also: https://newmanbuildingsolutions.com/bowing-walls/residential-victorian-properties-part-1/ https://newmanbuildingsolutions.com/bowing-walls/residential... > The Victorians often didn’t use this method of construction for foundations and instead used to build shallow footings out of a course of 5-6 bricks in a ‘pyramid’ shape spreading the load across the ground and in some cases the footings are no more than 200mm’s deep. > [...] The problems with the shallow foundations arise due to the shrinkage and heave of the clay soils that are found across London and the South East So the roots. Energy-wise the lack of insulation on the foundation is also an issue. Heat can escape downwards as well. (And slugs, rats, spiders up, but that's an other story.)
- hardlianotion 7y ago
  I don't see a contradiction! And yes, trees have a really big effect on the soil moisture content.
gerdesj 7y ago
My aunt and uncle's house has 1642 written on it, which was when it was last rebuilt from scratch. For the last few hundred years or so it has been simply patched with more mud, straw and horse piss. It too has no foundations to speak of unless you count the rather hard earth on which it stands. I tried smacking it with a lump hammer and once I'd stopped vibrating, I could not see a dent in it. One day I'll get a decent sized masonry bit out and see just how hard it really is but I suspect it is harder or at least tougher than the modern concrete base in my 1920s job. Back on topic, we have a 50' walnut tree in our garden that we tend to. It gets a feed every other year. Next door is a 100+ acre park, mostly woodland: oak, ash, beech, horse chestnut etc. It is really starting to look lovely after a 10 year plan to get rid of the laurels, which were planted about 150 odd years back but have turned out to be invasive, poisonous and left unchecked nearly took over completely.