i dont understand...

water at 8 feet deep.. the depth of your basement... harmed a tree????

if an 80 year old.. presumably huge tree .... is mostly brown... and can fall on your house..

GET RID OF IT ...

any chance at some pix???? i would like to know what kind of pine.. and what endemic pine bugs are in your county ...

ken

I suppose there is a chance it will recover....The classic conifers are apparently all about the buds. Can ya post a pic of the branch ends and then the whole tree?

Just for curiosity, does basement water mean sump pump water?

I had a leaky main line shut off valve down by the street. It leaked a few feet under ground and made the area prone to puddling after any kind of rain until the water company came and repaired it.

Thank you for your answers.

"Just for curiosity, does basement water mean sump pump water?"

Yes, this is exactly it. The house was built circa 1895. My parents bought the house in the late 40s/early 50s. I've seen pictures of these trees from then and they were (obviously) much smaller - maybe 12 or 15 feet high. Hence, my estimate of 75 years or so. They may have been planted in the 1940s (my best guess).

Anyhow, we inherited the house and are fixing all of the problems.

The trees are Norway Spruce. I've very confident of that, especially since Norway Spruce are planted all over the place around here. :-)

The basement water from the sump was pumped out to near the surface of the ground, through orange clay pipe to the front of the house (where the trees are), then through a 90 degree angle and through more orange pipe that runs parallel to the road and down to a catchment basin (creek).

The pipe ruptured not too far from the tree. The ground has been quite soggy there for a couple of years. We couldn't figure out why. This year it became almost a pond, with water finally leaching its way to the surface. After doing some digging, we found the old, crumbled orange pipe.

This spring the tree was standing in water for quite a while. The ground was saturated, then add in snow melt, and it was a swamp. But, apparently, it has been enduring soggy ground for a number of years because the pipe didn't break/crumble overnight.

Anyway, we've been fixing the problems. The ground has dried out. But this tree, aside from the new green growth, has not recovered.

I'll try to get pictures later, but no one would ever mistake me for a talented photographer. :-)

I would be pretty nervous about that tree. Keep a close watch on it next season and if it doesn't seem to improve, I would cut it down.

On a side note, that orange pipe sounds like terracotta pipe to me and I hope you replaced ever inch of it or you will just have that problem again in the future.

I took some pictures but they didn't turn out well. It's too late in the day and the sun is going down.

Yeah, Sequoiadendron, thousands of dollars later and all the pipe was replaced. Additionally, we regraded the ground where the water was coming into the basement and added gutters to the part of the roof where water comes off in torrents whenever it rains, and drives into the ground. Hopefully, that problem is gone.

I think I'll give the tree a chance and see what happens in the spring. If it doesn't look promising it will be removed and replaced. It has sprouted some new green needles this past spring, so maybe it has a small chance.

Thank you, everyone, for the information.