Trees versus Drains
Our house is really old which means things are constantly going wrong with it. Just recently all the lead-lighting fell out of the front room windows and the vines outside started infiltrating the toilet! They actually had such a stranglehold on the toilet pipes that I thought we were going to have to call the plumber just to snip them off. Thankfully though after wrestle with those creepers I managed to cut them up. Anyway, back to the point. Now we have the inconvenience of having to call up a company that does drain repair in Melbourne.
Turns out the tree and the drain are battling it out beneath the ground where I can’t even get to them! It’s causing the ground to crack and water to flow back up out of the drains and into the sink. The kitchen and bathroom smell funny too. Something seriously wasn’t right. I wouldn’t even have found the problem if it wasn’t for the cracks in the earth. At first when I saw them I thought it was our problem was blocked drains, Melbourne has been having some of those lately, but turns out it was far worse.
The tree is actually about one hundred years old.That’s why we haven’t gotten rid of it despite it being such a huge nuisance. The roots stretch all the way under the house and have upset the foundation at the corner of the property. The arborist warned us that we should get the stump removed but we didn’t listen because of its age and all that. He warned us that this would happen, that the tree roots would get into the drain, and now it’s happening. Who knows what kind of havoc it’s causing down there. In the battle between tree and drain, who will win?