Hi Jay and welcome to GoY. A 15 foot silver birch only 6 foot from your house is likely to cause problems.

Birch tend to produce shallow roots that spread out over a large area. The rule is that a tree's main root system extends out as far as the canopy, but the roots can spread further than that.

You run the risk of the roots invading clay sewage pipes and water pipes.

Personally if the tree was in my garden I'd be removing it, or getting a professional to do so.

Thanks for you help...i dont suppose you if cutting it down do any more damage, say by leaving a hole where the root were thanks again

The roots will still be in the ground even after you have chopped the tree down. You can use a stump grinder to remove the main root but the smaller roots will simply rot away over time.

Brilliant what a relief, do you know how far away conifers should be, sorry for the 100d questions, iv only just moved into this property thanks again

To be honest it depends on the conifer.

I use the rule of thumb that if it's my tree it should be no closer to any building than the ultimate height of the tree - that way if it comes crashing down in a storm it isn't going to go through a roof or a window and land me with a bill for the damage. That goes for distances to my neighbours' houses as well as my own.

That's a pretty good rule of thumb Urbanite.

Thank you for all of your advice

Thats exactly what we had to do to the silver birch that was here when we moved in, we watched as its roots raised the slabs towards the house so down it came, the stump killer worked too .

Yep your right same story here...have you had any problems since as i heard that cutting down a tree and getting rid of the roots can leave a 'sink hole' , and im hoping its all rumours

Jay as I have already stated you won't be able to get rid of all the roots, unless you plan on digging up an awful lot of your garden so there won't be a 'sink hole'!

So you did... sorry ...roll on dryer weather so i can get out there!

Good luck and make sure it falls away from the house!

One of the (slight) risks of removing a vigorous tree is that you are left with the water that the tree was taking up - that's what causes the sink hole. It isn't a hole, as such but the sump effect of ground water that is no longer being drawn up.
You can counteract that by planting some shrubs in place of the tree.

We took down a huge ash tree from the end of our garden a couple of years ago, the only effect was to let a lot more light into that area of the garden.