i did not watch this video but i do know for a fact that a hanging man basket has no place in tree work. oh, wait.... that tree was a hazardous tree and you wouldn't tie into it or rig off it? i maaaaay know how to remedy that situation...
listen not trying to ruin your day but even though the video was probably made with the bestest of them there intentions..... it was still wrong.
stay safe.
Maybe you are getting at the technique of rigging yourself off the crane (I'm not going to join the argument as to HOW), and rappel off the hook after cutting each piece and before it is laid down? I think I read that described here somewhere. The point was, I did not trust the leaders to bear the weight of rigging down the limbs. Turned out they DID bear the weight just fine -- but I did not know that for sure.
I do tree risk assessments (ISA, ASCA cert, yadda yadda yadda). I first got the call because a 40 ft. limb fell on the patio just after the family left -- and it was rotten at the attachment; I did the risk assessment and report before I gave him a bid on the job. With the obvious decay and topping history, i would have wanted to climb each leader and inspect them up close, probably drill them as well to test for decay. There was no time or budget for that (plus I couldn't CLIMB (see below), so I took a conservative option (notwithstanding you and some others believe that the man basket is MORE dangerous).
It so happened that the job was scheduled just after I had my thumb in a splint (dislocated) and two weeks after a rotator cuff injury -- my job was mainly to manage the crew and be a back -up set of eyes for safety that day. I went off my Vicodin to keep a clear head; the pain kept me focused on avoiding MORE pain. I HAD planned to take a turn rigging and cutting some big wood on the tree, but missed the chance.
If we can never agree on the man basket thing, so be it.
The client was a tightwad, and actually agreed to let us crash what we hadn't finished the first day (the last two leaders) to save money. Go figure -- the sound of a 800 pound chunk of locust hitting a concrete patio from 50 ft. was pretty impressive. We rigged the pieces with a fiddle block to make sure and miss the home and the basketball hoop. Which we did. A second crane was obviously out of the question. My climber brushed the tree and lowered three of the five leaders in 7 1/2 hrs., and that was after I had to talk the owner into paying for another hr of crane time.
It wasn't a take down -- the tree is still there and is expected to go on growing -- just gave it a haircut from 94 f. to 20 -30 ft.:msp_biggrin:
We probably could have crashed the entire tree piece by piece with a climber tied into the tallest spar, using the fiddleblock to pull things over into free-fall -- but it is hard to predict the degree of impact, and after the fact, what do you do when the client claims you caused more damage than you said would happen? There was that antique Craftsman home with lots of windows 20 ft. away, after all. I busted a window once tossing the last 4 in. limb of a take down to the ground; it bounced in the reverse direction and through the double-slider window; these limbs were up to four times thicker and three times longer, up to 90 ft. up, and the windows were all antique.
same grouping of trees 3 hours later , by hand no magic stick just me and a saw LOL ! And all three were completely uprooted and loose and weight bearing the roof ,
