Air spades are increasingly being requested for excavations within rooting areas. Whether it’s for detailed root inspection, excavation or soil decompaction, the air spade is a simple cost-effective tool for sensitive excavations with minimal damage.
The use of a compressed air-powered tool, or Air spade, facilitates excavation, soil management and tree health care within a tree’s critical root zone. Unlike mechanical excavation techniques, air spading efficiently loosens soil allowing us to remove the material with our Vacuum excavator, with minimal to no damage to a tree’s delicate root system.
Specialised Air Spade Excavation for Construction
Lack of proper consideration and planning, excavation to build foundations, install pavements and utilities can cause excessive damage to a tree’s root zone. Utilising the Air Spade, trial pit excavation can be carried out to carefully expose and accurately determine tree root positions justifying any reduction in root protection areas and giving an increased area to work. Any tree roots that are found are then measured, photographed and wrapped to prevent desiccation. From this information, additional reports can be produced to support a BS5837:2012 document and allow informed decisions to be made regarding working in the theoretical rooting area of protected trees.
Root Collar Investigations
There are numerous pathogens that can affect the root collar region of trees, that can’t usually be inspected due to being underground. Typically trees that are suspected of having root decay are felled on a “just in case” basis of risk management. Using our Air Spade and Vac-ex, we excavate soil from the root collar, or the rooting area in general, to facilitate a thorough inspection of the root collar and buttress area. From this, we can then determine the extent of any root damage, be it fungal or Abiotic, the extent of any root decay, and check for girdling roots which, if caught early enough, can be pruned to prevent any long-term harm from arising.