If left to grow unchecked bamboo roots can eventually damage foundations. It’s a highly invasive plant that is difficult to eradicate, and its root systems are extremely strong. When we bought our current house there was a patch of bamboo that the previous owners have planted. Luckily not near the house though. I’m on my third year ripping out stalks of it that continue to appear. If you google something like “ bamboo foundation damage” you can find photos, articles, etc.
The thing is, it mostly takes advantage of cracks in concrete foundations, gaps in stone foundations, etc. The chances of it damaging a modern datacenter foundation is probably very low. And it would likely take decades to cause any significant damage. Assuming the datacenter didn’t just bring in a backhoe and dig it all up by long before it became a serious problem.
Herbicides alone aren’t enough to deal with a well established cluster of bamboo. The waxy leaves prevent the plant from absorbing them. To properly kill it you need to cut the bamboo close to the ground then pour herbicide on the cut stems as quickly as possible. Waiting even a few minutes can be too long since healthy bamboo will quickly seal cuts. And with healthy bamboo the root systems are so extensive that this will just cause the roots to send up new stalks in other places. So you need to repeat the process of cutting and applying herbicide multiple times until you no longer see new stalks appearing anywhere.
We were lucky enough to have a contractor working here when we first tackled the bamboo patch. He scraped off the first 6” or so of soil with his skid steer. What he dug up was basically a 6 foot square mass of roots…
Wasn’t that AI generated photo that got passed around like a week ago? How would that do anything to the building
If left to grow unchecked bamboo roots can eventually damage foundations. It’s a highly invasive plant that is difficult to eradicate, and its root systems are extremely strong. When we bought our current house there was a patch of bamboo that the previous owners have planted. Luckily not near the house though. I’m on my third year ripping out stalks of it that continue to appear. If you google something like “ bamboo foundation damage” you can find photos, articles, etc.
The thing is, it mostly takes advantage of cracks in concrete foundations, gaps in stone foundations, etc. The chances of it damaging a modern datacenter foundation is probably very low. And it would likely take decades to cause any significant damage. Assuming the datacenter didn’t just bring in a backhoe and dig it all up by long before it became a serious problem.
Or more likely the datacenter would start systematically applying herbicides.
Herbicides alone aren’t enough to deal with a well established cluster of bamboo. The waxy leaves prevent the plant from absorbing them. To properly kill it you need to cut the bamboo close to the ground then pour herbicide on the cut stems as quickly as possible. Waiting even a few minutes can be too long since healthy bamboo will quickly seal cuts. And with healthy bamboo the root systems are so extensive that this will just cause the roots to send up new stalks in other places. So you need to repeat the process of cutting and applying herbicide multiple times until you no longer see new stalks appearing anywhere.
The stuff is awful, I’ve dug it up before, you really need a machine to drill the roots out doing it by hand is just not efficient enough.
We were lucky enough to have a contractor working here when we first tackled the bamboo patch. He scraped off the first 6” or so of soil with his skid steer. What he dug up was basically a 6 foot square mass of roots…
I just pulled three more stalks half an hour ago…