Bamboo and damage

 This rampant bamboo is growing to within a few feet of this 1936 terraced
house which is built on ground which has the top 12 inches being Loam and
then Clay below that.

http://tinypic.com/r/22hmz5/7


Might this situation result in excessive moisture absorption by the bamboo
resulting in movement to the foundations?

 Dave East wrote:

It apparently unusual for bamboo roots to go deeper than 12", so its
unlikely they will go under the foundations.

Trees are far more dangerous - willows in particular.

I would not worry.

 On 24/08/2011 12:08, Dave East wrote:

Probably not is is quite shallow rooted. Nice clump of bamboo BTW.
Not really rampant either some species can grow to 20' or more.

Regards,
Martin Brown

 
No-one mentioned the several clumps of bamboo we have when we were having
our subsidence investigated. They were much keener on the leylandii hedge
to the North and the oak tree whose canopy touched the house.


--
Today is Sweetmorn, the 17th day of Bureaucracy in the YOLD 3177
               Sing, for song drives away the wolves.

 
Bamboo is a problem for being invasive, but much less so for
structural damage. Its roots are relatively flimsy and shallow, not
like tree roots, so they don't do much for levering apart pipe joints
or masonry.  This also means that they're pretty easy to control,
either with shallow buried barrier fences or just by grubbing them
out. Really I don't know why gardeners complain about bamboo invasions
at all, they're really quite easy to deal with. The best thing for
digging them is a Japanese root chopping sickle (Axminster) - a small
serrated sickle, great for bamboo and smaller brambles. Favourite
garden gadget at the moment.

A bamboo will extract moisture, and if you extract enough moisture
from clay, then you get shrinkage and possibly movement. However if
you have a layer of loam over clay, I'd be really surprised (but check
first) if the bamboo was rooting into the clay, rather than preferring
to stay in the surface layer.