Protecting Trees Before a New Build Development
Protecting trees during construction projects is important as it’s not easy to replace veteran trees, like a 300-year-old oak!
Construction traffic, plant operations and the storage of site materials in the wrong place can all lead to accidental tree damage.
Action needs to be taken to protect the tree and roots from accidental damage before any construction work can take place.
Dandara have been building award-winning homes for over 30 years but before they could get started on the construction of 400 new homes, they needed to make sure all trees on the site were protected.
We recently installed over 4km of tree protection fencing for them as part of our BS5837 root and tree preservation service. The fencing was positioned so as to create a safe exclusion zone around the trees, staggered so as to protect the canopies as well. It’s strong enough to act as a robust physical barrier in the event of accidental machinery collision.
We used anti-climb fencing throughout, which also helps to protect the construction site against trespassers. For the most part the fencing was attached to scaffolding poles buried deep into the ground as this provides the strongest fence.
After careful analysis, we opted to use rubber feet instead of scaffolding poles for certain sections of the site. This was to avoid causing damage to dormice habitats as they burrow in the top layer of soil and foliage. It’s important to consider this ahead of time, before driving a scaffolding pole into the ground, as dormice are found in very few places in the UK and are protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act, 1981.
Now that are fencing is in place Dandara can now get plant, machinery and materials on site to start the process of building hundreds of new homes.
