Made No Insurance Claims? I Know U Smashed Something!

[capetrees]

Last fall a guy called, said he need to remove some trees in his yard for an addition he was putting on his house. He had to go through the zoning committees first but said the trees had to come down regardless of their decision. I told him I'd rather wait till they gave him permission. He said go for it. I gave him two prices, one for dropping them piece by piece because they overhung the house and the other to drop them right on the house considering he was tearing it down anyway. He took the lower price and I had to have called him 20 times to make sure he COMPLETELY knew what I was about to do. He did. It sure felt creepy dropping 24" calliper locust trees on a house intentionally. Crushed the hell out of it. The owner came down while we were doing it. LOVED IT! Still feels wierd.

 

[masterarbor]

that would be weird!

 

[pdqdl]

Here's my best story about liability:

I visited a client to evaluate a tree. Silver maple, with weak fork, some dead branches, obvious broken spar decaying, with an 8" limb attached extending 20' over his back porch: a curved glass greenhouse ! Naturally, I suggested trimming off the overhang attached to the spar, so that it never could fall on the greenhouse.

Ok, now I am doing the job. Nothing overhead to tie off to, I am hanging out on this branch, and have everything rigged and ready to cut. Prepared about 2' of slack in the bull rope, and gave the 8" limb a nice undercut. Slack still hanging, as I intended, and JUST AS the cut begins to drop, closing the undercut... the groundman yanks out the slack, it hits my chainsaw (I never have figured out how that happened), and clips the line clean off ! No more rope in the tree to tie to, either, as he pulled the rope out of the tree.

Panic stricken, I am seeing thousands of dollars in damage coming my way. Magically, the brisk wind died down to a calm, just as the rope fell. I screamed for another rope to be sent up on my climbing line [I would have used my climbing line first, but the limb was too heavy for me to tend it.]

I got a new line, had to reach WAY out to grab the tag end of the rope still secured to the limb, and quickly tied a square knot. At the very moment I yanked the last tie on the square knot, the hinge broke, and I grabbed the loose line, adding a small amount of friction to pull the falling branch away from the gutters of the house. My groundmen finally managed to grab the rest of the load, and the whole thing swung gracefully past the glass roof. It almost looked like we knew what we were doing all the time.

Smoked my palm good on the rope, but no liability claims.

Apart from an occasional top rail or fence section, That's about it for me.

Oops ! I forgot about that 4' oak log that broke the rope...another day for that story.

 

[masterarbor]

neat...:jawdrop:

 

[UtahTreeGuy]

Should I be ashamed?

Because I have plenty of damage storiesopcorn:

 

[Sunrise Guy]

One of my guys dropped an oak limb from twenty-five feet at an apartment complex. It hit brush end first and hopped twenty feet---right onto the hood of a newish car in the parking lot. The ding was as small as a hailstone hit, but every darn place the owner took it to told him it couldn't be pulled out. Finally found a place to do it for $600. They had to repaint the complete hood and it was bright yellow. The guy was actually a nice fellow and a brother heavy-worker in the construction trade. I felt sorry for him as he was battling losing his thumb from a freak bike accident where a minor sprain became a major infected injury. FWIW, don't just slap a bandage or splint on and forget your own minor cuts and bruises. Get professional medical attention, when necessary, and stay safe.