Cement filled tree......

[Automender]

Not a professional tree guy but a retired registered Professional Engineer in a couple of states. One thing about concrete is it is it is weak in tension and needs either pretensioned for beams or rebar, It adds little to the overall strength to tree. In a vertical column the one side is in tension and will crack without reinforcement.

 

[chainbrake]

Not a professional tree guy but a retired registered Professional Engineer in a couple of states. One thing about concrete is it is it is weak in tension and needs either pretensioned for beams or rebar, It adds little to the overall strength to tree. In a vertical column the one side is in tension and will crack without reinforcement.

Absolutely, that is why it must be supported while wood is removed around it so that sections can be taken down.

In my experience on the construction site, if quarters are tight and the "tower" cannot be pulled over safely, a cherry picker and a crane would be called in to keep the worker away from the load, and the load stable while it is dismantled.

I took it for granted that anyone pumping vertical columns of concrete into a tree would be placing rebar into that pour. Maybe that was an assumption that that was not necessarily true.

 

[ZinTrees]

I took it for granted that anyone pumping vertical columns of concrete into a tree would be placing rebar into that pour. Maybe that was an assumption that that was not necessarily true.

I've hit rebar and concrete, but never concrete with rebar

anybody pouring concrete into a tree probably isn't sharp enough to realize they need to put rebar in there for it to do anything even remotely structural

 

[Howsitgoineh]

No worries

Yes, still an issue, not as common now but I'd day atleast 50% of all arborists will experience it one day

That and metal in trees, I've cut lag bolts in half before, horse shoes are pretty common too

Yeah I know this thread is ancient but I had to add to this. I've only been a commercial arborist for a year now, and I have already seen 3 trees with concrete in them our quote sheets state that if there is any hardware or other foreign material in the tree(s) that an extra cost will be added.

Highest we've seen it was nearly 30ft up, as someone had mentioned previously - I just thought wow.

We hit metal almost on a weekly basis. Nails, screws, bolts, etc. craziest metal objet I've sawn into was a pulley for a clothesline. I couldn't believe it.. that thing was completely buried, no sign of it at all. Like the tree had swallowed it

 

[pdqdl]

I've hit rebar and concrete, but never concrete with rebar

anybody pouring concrete into a tree probably isn't sharp enough to realize they need to put rebar in there for it to do anything even remotely structural

Same here. I think the old-school thinking was that the concrete filled the void and somehow made the tree better. To a certain extent, this would be true, as the outer shell of the tree would have more of an inner structure to handle the compressive forces, regardless of rebar or tension.

Of course, that wouldn't count for too much 5 years later, when the advancing decay increased the air gap between the concrete fill and the trunk.

 

[ZinTrees]

Of course, that wouldn't count for too much 5 years later, when the advancing decay increased the air gap between the concrete fill and the trunk.

Exactly how my concrete filled tree was, at some point it was totally full, when we worked on it, the concrete was just loose and sitting there doing nothing but costing me a few thousand bucks and wasting an extra day with the crane, yes, a whole extra day, tried to help the guy out but eventually just left