Help!!!

[treeman82]

Guys, I have a big problem, and I need help TONIGHT. I have a new client who's trees are in absolutely horrid condition. I was working there yesterday and saw a lot of problems. Broken branches all over the place... enough hazard work to keep a crew of three busy for about a week or a little more. There are about 15 smallish hemlocks which are under stress which have Hemlock Wolly Adelgid. There are also about 4 or 5 medium - small elms which are dead from DED.

I can deal with the hazard work, and the hemlock work because there are only those 15 trees on the property. However the DED trees are a big problem. The reason for this is because there are at LEAST 40 - 50 elms on this guy's property. They are scattered all over the place. The guy has the 5 trees all in front of the house by the road, however he cut down a lot of trees over the last couple years. Probably several of them were elms, and if so they had DED. However he doesn't know what an elm looks like... so he wasn't able to help me figure out how many infected trees he removed. The wood from what I can tell was moved around the property... never being removed. The chips also stayed on the property being spread around all over the place. The stumps are all rotten out, so there is no way to tell what was elm and what wasn't. What do I tell this guy? I told him that I would like to inject the elms... but I am not sure exactly how many I should be treating. I told him I would have an e-mail out his way by the morning because I needed to think about things, plus I am going away on vacation for the rest of the week starting tomorow.

HELP!

 

[treeman82]

PS. price is not an issue here. He said to me tonight when I told him what had to be done "Do it tomorow." The guy has a live in nanny, a live in groundskeeper, inground pool, tennis court, etc.

 

[Kneejerk Bombas]

How big is the lot?

 

[treeman82]

Couple acres. All the woods are thinned out. So you can walk through them and what not without any problems. Maybe about 7 - 12 acres????

 

[Treeman14]

If money is not an issue, then treat ALL of them. What's the problem?

 

[Kneejerk Bombas]

I ask, because DED injections don't protect against root graft infections. If the spread is as wide spread as you suggest, you will need carefull maping, but it's probably too late to save any of the trees.

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

The biggest problem is the moving ove the wood, if it as done before the bark fell off.

DED can be pretty funny, some trees can tolerate, loosing only a few limbs, not shoing a sign when others around go POOF

If they died from DED 2 years ago and there was no graft transfer then there is little chance of it vectoring that way. You need live root to root. Which is whay in stands we want to remove asap.

Overwintering a dead tree is bad because of the broodlog potential. If deadwood boarers are in the wood, it is safe.

There is a book on elms and the history of DED out there that is very good. A compilation of research papers. I cannot remember the name, I got it at amazon 2 years ago for MCC.

Anyways they say that it is a very weak pathogen and the bark beetle a very poor vector. You need the high populations and secondary stresses for the C. ulmi-novi to casue a tree to colapse (unfortunatly a lot of that is happening around here with the drought).

Since the 3x macrofusion wounds the tree and requires repeated wounding, I would consult with the client and decide which are the most important trees, treat those. the secondary ones play wait and see. if they start to flag then remove the infected branches as directed (10ft?) and treat per lable as a preventative. That is if the flagging is from top down

I would even go so far as to recomend not doing anything with any tree untill flagging is noticed. Arbotech works well as a preventative and then you can go on the 3x rotation.

The most important tree get an irrigation system, or you bring in Bob's Sausages so thatthey get water like the bottomland trees they are. IMO hydration is the biggest limiting factor with elms and tolerance DED. It will be a long time before we get true resistance in the species, there are strains with better tolerance standing in woods and cities right now. most are in optimal sites for thier helth and have perfect flairs.

 

[treeman82]

This is a copy of the e-mail I sent tonight.

Mike:

Here are my thoughts on the situation with the trees at your property.

1) Hazards (broken branches / dead trees / dead branches / trees with a lot of rot / trees with extremely weak branch unions and cracks / etc.) These should all be removed. Whether that involves pruning, or complete removal at the ground. Obviously a tree with one broken branch will only need pruning. However a tree with many broken branches, rot, dead branches, etc. should be removed due to having too many structural defects. I feel that this work should take roughly 10 days to complete. That is however taking into consideration that not every tree will be pruned, and that only larger dead wood, broken branches, and removals will be done. If you want to prune all of the trees, we would obviously be talking about a lot more time and money. For this type of work I normally ask $1,500 for 1 climber, 2 ground men, 1 truck, and 1 chipper. The removal of wood is not factored in to that price.

2) Hemlock Wolly Adelgids: As you said, you will be removing several of the hemlock trees. If you would like to keep some of these trees, we would have to treat them for the trees which are in the area, and their proximity to the house. The other 2 options would both be fine. Seeing as how they are all stressed, immediate action will be required. There are 3 treatment options for the most part; spraying, injecting, and a soil drench. Spraying unfortunately will not work because of the other trees in the area, and their proximity to the house. One alternative to cutting the trees down would be to transplant them elsewhere on the property. Possibly along the top of the hill by the tennis court? Hemlocks do prefer sunlight.

3) Dutch Elm Disease: This again will require immediate action. Dutch Elm Disease is transferred in 2 ways. One is from root grafting, the other is from bark beetles which live in infected wood. We know that Dutch Elm Disease is present on your property because of the dead trees in the front of the house. The only thing we don't know is how many trees are infected. We can manage this disease by doing some sanitation work; pruning out any infected wood, and injecting the trees. Due to the fact that you have so many elm trees on the property, and that you cut a good amount over the years, it might not be such a bad idea to prune them all, and inject them all. The cost for this would be $10 per caliper inch (trunk inches in diameter at 6" off the ground). As far as the presently dead trees go, as well as any infected branches, we will have to chip up all the brush and remove the chips from the site. Any wood from these trees will have to be removed from your property. There is a place to dump up in Brewster, however they do charge a few bucks to leave any debris. I would need you to cover that cost, as well as any time I spend driving to and from your house and that location.

4) Rotten Stumps: While these are breaking down in the soil, they rob prescious nitrogen from the other plants. They also attract diseases and decay fungi. Some of the diseases which they attract can be fatal to other trees nearby. Those are the botanical problems. The main problem that they pose to you and I is that they are a liability. It is better to have them ground out that to have someone trip and get hurt. I can grind them out, and place the spoils back in the holes for $25 per stump. If you wish, I can also remove the spoils for an hourly fee of $50 per man hour. I can then fill in the holes with loam, seed, and straw for $100 per cubic yard of soil used.

5) I am attaching a file for you to peruse at your convenience. I made it up last summer in a rush, so please pardon the appearance. It does however do the job.

I hope this information has helped you in formulating an idea of what we can do together for your property.

- Matt

 

[treeman82]

In posting, I saw 2 grammatical errors

 

[Treeman14]

On #1, you might want to clarify that the $1,500 price is per day, not for the entire ten days.

 

[treeman82]

Brett, thank you . I actually had a LOT of problems last night trying to send this thing out so I caught most of the grammatical errors. However I did not catch the per day part that you mentioned above

Otherwise it looks alright though?

 

[Kneejerk Bombas]

If you are doing chemical work, you might want to add that materials are extra. That stuff ain't cheap.

 

[Kneejerk Bombas]

An email is less formal than a written bid, IMO. You don't want to come off as an idiot, but just so you have the important things covered it should be ok.
The bid looks fine to me, just that you have an email puts you ahead of most of the pack.

 

[Stumper]

As Brett said the $1500 portion reads as though you will work for ten days for $1500.-period. Total. The other thing I see is a personal preference.---Lots of guys do "time and materials" bids so I don't say they are wrong but they can be awfully intimidating. (This guy wants $50 per man hour to run a shovel - How long is it going to take? . My preference is to figure out how long it will take approximately and then build that into the bid. A lot of people can see that-"okay, this is a big job this price sounds reasonable" but the same person may balk when they see how much per hour or even how much per day. The same person who may tell you "I wouldn't climb a tree for $100 per hour." may be outraged that "that guy wants 50 bucks an hour to run a shovel and a wheelbarrow!". The reality of doing business is that you need to get paid a lot more per hour than what somebody on a company payroll could be delegated to do a job for per manhour but not everyone sees that. In fact most working class people don't-because they have never really thought it through.A lot of small contractors haven't thought it through either so even some business people are accustomed to getting "grunt labor" cheap.

My preference for making a bid such as yours (again I'm not saying what you did was wrong just giving my preference) would have been to say that all of the pruning as described willl be $15000 .
Stump removal will be $xx or an average of $25 per stump-if you wish to remove some but not all of the stumps we can evaluate them and see if they can be done for the average per stump price or an adjustment in per stump cost made up or down. Cleaning out stump grindings and replaceing with soil will be $xx per stump (average).
Chemical treatment will be $xx per caliper inch. Approximate total cost for all trees involved is $xx.
Total cost for all proposed work $xxxxx

I will be happy to discuss doing all or of the proposed work or any portion thereof......

Hope that that this is helpful.:angel:

P.S. I know that figuring out the actual time on big jobs is hard. Moresowhen you are just getting started. That is why in a previous post I suggested figuring as best you could then doubling it. If you are like I am and overly optimistic about how quickly you can do it that would save your bacon . If you were on and got the job- you'll do really well. and if you missed getting the job..... better to not have it than go broke doing it.

 

[treeman82]

Hey guys, I am upstate in this POS dude ranch. The vacation is gonna last not even a whopping 24 hrs. We got here today around 12:30 or so, will be leaving before that time tomorow. The place is HORRID.

In regards to the e-mail I tried to send the guy, either something is messed up with yahoo, or he is having problems with his e-mail addresses. Nothing I sent to him went through, even after I had it looking just right I tried sending another e-mail to his wife who's e-mail I got through an internet seach, as well as on her business card. None of those addresses work. I have a telephone number for the house, and a cell phone number as well. I tried calling the telephone number a couple days ago but nobody answered, and there was no answering machine set up. The only way I have to get in touch with this guy right now is by going to his house after he gets home at 8:00 PM or by going there before he leaves in the morning at 8:00 AM. Possibly something is not right? I mean the guy seems like he is on the up and up.

Catch up with you all tomorow once I get home.

 

[Dan F]

Matt,
To expand slightly on what Stumper already suggested, a bit of constructive criticism:

If you only corrected 2 grammatical errors to the email that you posted a copy of, then you had a long way to go.

A professionally packaged bid and accompanying documents goes a looong way towards impressing potential clients and helps to ease fears as to whether or not the work will be worth it. Without going through line-by-line, what you posted was far from that. If you are in doubt as to whether something looks professional, start by reading it aloud to yourself. If still in doubt, have someone else read it and make suggestions. I'm fortunate, my wife did very well in English class.

If you are sending something like you posted to a good friend or someone you are doing a favor for, you are probably fine. However, if you are sending that to a potential client, or even someone who is an existing client, you should spend some time and get things looking as good as possible...

I'm not trying to get you pissed off at me, not trying to point out flaws that you might have. Just trying to help. I do realize that what you posted may have been an early draft and what actually was sent (or attempted to send) may have looked (grammatically) completely different.


Dan

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

Rotting stumps are not bad, they actually are good places to plant trees, like yellow birch.