Are large tree branches hanging over a house a recipe for disaster?

They can but it isn’t a safe bet as my mom learned a decade ago.

Here is her house. They had a tree like the one at the front of the image in the front yard. Massive branches hanging over the house. Until it got cold one night and it froze. No snow but it was cold enough to freeze and it was pretty windy. At around 4AM a branch that was around 18 inches in diameter cut the living-room in half. If anyone had been on the couch they would be dead.

The tree is now firewood.

They are a risk factor. Just like having a high water table or being in the flight path to an airport (in the approach or takeoff path, that is) is also a risk factor, among many others.

Obviously the tree’s health should be monitored, and if the integrity of the house itself is threatened, as @johnpowell described and showed, then more aggressive mitigation may be required: pruning the tree or even cutting it down, for example. (Tree roots also threaten sidewalk levelness and septic / sewage lines, as well. Those may not be existential type threats, but they should all be looked at.)

Squirrels and other animals will climb up them, and get onto your roof, and if you have openings into your attic.

If a branch falls the fixing can be expensive. If it’s a huge branch and it falls someone could get very hurt or killed.

Even if the tree is healthy and unlikely to lose a branch, one bad lightening storm can bring it, or the entrie tree down.

It also bears mentioning that if the roots run under the house, killing the tree can lead to foundation damage.

Most of the “sinkhole damage” to homes in Florida is actually caused by rotting tree roots.

I would imagine the quality and strength of the studs and roofing materials would play a significant role in how safe tree branches are. If they hang over a mobile home, for instance, they should be cut down as soon as possible. If a house is made of granite , has a tile roof and the trees have hung over it for fifteen years I think it would be less of a threat.

I thought you lot loved this, ideal treehouse location

Don’t ask us…ask a professional arborist. It all depends on the trees plus how well you maintain them. Pruning trees are essential for maintaining a healthy strong tree that won’t crush your house in a storm.

In the land where they live in yurts, they won’t set one up anyplace where the shadow of a tree can fall on it.

The Boy Scout manual cautions scouts never to put a tent under a tree for any reason.