Nice work Dan! I love feeding dead limbs through the chipper. Did the homeowner fish for the "how much to cut a tree like this down?" price.
No, thank God. Its the specimen of the neighborhood, I am at 222 he is 245, its was a refferal, I did stuff for the neighbors. The one guy has a homeade OWB, burns year round.
The kid, (HO) was good, we talked, he heard, as I was walking away he calls me back. No signature, word of mouth, he got what we were going to do on paper though and we did it.
HE looked around for prices and listened to others and doesn't have a lot of cash. I remember my first house, I thought we were doomed. He mentioned paying in cash so I dropped the price, there were many crinkled 5 dollar bills... and 5 ones.
I would have liked to blow the gutters but I might have broke them and for the money I didn't want the risk. The place could use a roof, we were limb nurses in a maternity ward with it. We took the light down. Tell OD ladders are Ok and nobody is lazy around here.
Jesse and I took some pretty big ( about 10 limbs of 7 to 12 in dia) I got anything the would hit the house. The tree has some cankers and funky crotches but what can you do. I went around pretty good, Jesse did too, on the roof, in the yard, behind the chipper. I held the butt line for some which we just let down on the low roof or swung off. Some small stuff we brought tip tied through the middle. I actually used the pole about 10 times. I don't like that thing. Some of the white eyes from the front door side are from previous bad cuts and whatnot.
I used the 3/4 3strand ( well its a little thinner theses days) for working the thick crotches running slow on the butt line in these situations, use the 16 strand for the tip. I think before you head up a tree like this you take time to set numerous lines, then go to wawa for coffee and doughnuts. After all that zinging my fingers were numb but it got better with the hot coffee... and of course the doughnuts. Total time working on this job was approx 4 hours 2 guys.
Now the HO did ask me about the 2 limbs. Yeah, the little guy should come off, and we can get it, just not for 450. I hope I did right by everyone. One thing always echos in my head: " Just don't be giving it away you moron". I don't know, we talked about pruning it and getting limbs off, he said deadwood. He was thinking ' minimalist', so was I.