On 24/08/2011 16:23, Jonathan wrote:
On Aug 24, 12:51 pm, Andy wrote:
On Aug 24, 12:08 pm, "Dave wrote:

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.

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.

I had bamboo roots go through 4" of a concrete pond once.

Mine is contained by wavy plastic lawn edging driven in until flush to
the ground.

Colin Bignell