There are only three tree services in town.. i don't need 100 of each."
Well then you'll have 97 left for Consumers. (tree owners). That's why it's called Consumer Tree Care information.
That's why I said "practical investment to first educate customers who then will avoid hacks and hire a good arborist instead." That $.22 helps me get a lot of jobs, and turns price-shoppers into quality-grabbers.
Nick I have their cookie, but I got the same msg as glen.
You can also contact the US Forest Service in Moscow. They may even have some free info you can hand out. Put your tax dollars to work.
"The sycamore is prolly going to have to have the top taken off 6 inches below the end of the rotted hollow.. there's prolly 8-10 feet of tree above the rot, and it's just asking to come down on the house next to it."
Are you sure that removing the entire decayed portion is necessary?
What % of sound wood is still there? If > 1/3, it may be enough.
Will you be making a new wound that will just start decaying all over again?
How many branches are attached to the hollowed portion?
Will removing them make the tree structurally safer, or not?
If drop-crotching exposes the remaining branches to more stress and strain, how is the tree safer than if heading cuts were made? The damping effect of limbs, for years thickened by torque, is altered while other branches thicken under the new load. The tree is vulnerable to disintegration while new reaction wood is formed in response to the new stresses. As Dr. Karl Niklas notes in the Tree Structure and Mechanics Proceedings, “When exposed by the removal of neighboring stems, previously sheltered and mechanically reliable body parts may deform or break even under wind conditions that are ‘normal’.”
Avoiding decay is another good reason to make nodal cuts just below the storm-caused wounds. Large wounds on trunks are unlikely to close before they start cracking and become what Schwarze, Engels and Mattheck refer to in Fungal Strategies of Wood Decay in Trees as “motorways for decay-causing fungi and bacteria racing into the heart of the tree.” Our strategy must be to minimize the infection courts we create. Retaining branches that Nature topped also avoids sun injury, defined by Shigo in ANTB Dictionary as “…when trees are suddenly exposed to direct sunlight…The bark cambium is affected and the outer bark plates are flattened”. These injuries are slow to seal because the tree’s interior bark is very thin, and the sun dries the tissue at the edge. Big pruning cuts and sun-damaged bark may never seal.
Sometimes leaving part of a decayed portion can leave intact boundaries that the tree spent a lot of energy to make, and prevent the tree from making new ones.
"luckily only the one needs topped."
What you are considering is NOT topping, it is crown cleaning.