Tree on house - cutting question

[Groundman One]

You should be very impressed by the artwork below. It took me hours to do that.

The question: Several times a summer we face the problem shown in the pic below. A tree falls on a house. My climber either gets up on the roof or climbs up the tree itself and removes Section A. He leaves a foot or two above the roof line (where the arrow is) to keep the trunk in place. This is where we always scratch our brains and try to figure out how to get Section B down without it scrapping down the side of the house. If we can, we tie off Section B, cut below the roof's edge, and either lower it slowly -cutting more as it goes - or let it fall clear of the wall if possible. But sometimes we get stuck where there's no tree to tie the trunk to and we just... figure it out. I swear if we did it ten days in a row we'd do it ten different ways.

So how do you get section B down without killing the house if there's no other tree to tie off too?

(We did a takedown with the Porta-Wrap this afternoon that made us think of this problem and I told him I would ask on on the tree site. 'Cause some smart guy here is sure to have the answer.)

Thanks!

 

[ozzy42]

It has been my experience in situations like you described,by time you remove part a,,,part b is no longer resting on the house.
What diameter is the trunk at the edge of the house?

 

[Rickytree]

You could put some kind of support under the piece in question but it still doesn't put you in a safe spot for the removal of the piece touching the house. The best thing is to find a guy with a small crane that is will to work for cash or a cheap rate. My guy's $90/hr but that's negotiable.

 

[Groundman One]

It has been my experience in situations like you described,by time you remove part a,,,part b is no longer resting on the house.

You're right, that does happen sometimes. Then it's a gimme.

What diameter is the trunk at the edge of the house?

12" to 18", maybe. Rarely more than 18".

You could put some kind of support under the piece in question but it still doesn't put you in a safe spot for the removal of the piece touching the house. The best thing is to find a guy with a small crane that is will to work for cash or a cheap rate. My guy's $90/hr but that's negotiable.

I think we tried the support thing once and it worked, but it was pretty sketchy.

The only crane we can get here charges a $400 minimum at a $100 an hour, and there's an hour of travel in the minimum charge, so you're getting three-hours with the crane. Which is lots, but then we'd like to schedule two or three crane jobs on the same day to get our money's worth, but it's very rare that we have more than one crane job per season. We'd be happy to use the crane but the customer would freak if our price jumped several hundred dollars on top of our standard rate. They'd tell us to bugger off and hire someone else.

 

[Blakesmaster]

A decent sized skidsteer could probably push it up off the house and hold it at an angle while the climber chunks it down. Still sketchy but a rental for a skidsteer is a lot less than a crane. My company doesn't really do storm work because we're not really equipped for it, when I work for the bigger outfits they'll use either a crane or a grapple truck to lift the log.

 

[xander9727]

Crane or skid loader is how we do it. I like to remove the canopy and see if it lifts any. If not I'll use a rubber tracked loader or a crane. Sometimes you can rig a lifting line off a neighboring tree. You need to be careful......if the wind damaged one......it may have damaged others. You don't want two trees on the house. Quite often with storms you can line up several jobs so that the crane rental is well worth it.
My $.02

 

[Mapleman]

Is it a pine or an oak? Hard wood or soft? It makes a big difference.

Assuming there's no nearby tree to hang a block in and pull it off the roof with a 4 WD vehicle, or that the tree still sits on the roof once the crown is removed, then you'll need to rig a dead man under the trunk close to the exposed root ball. Throw a rope over the backside of the house to secure the piece that will stay on the roof once that gut wrenching cut is made just short of the eave. You could make the cut from the roof, but a safer option would be to make the cut from a ladder against the eave or from some kind of platform.

The dead man should be backed up with another a few feet forward of the first one. Also notch the cut on the bottom and drive a wedge on the top cut.

I've used this scenario on several hurricane jobs.

 

[ropensaddle]

Done a great many of those I piece out A from the bucket or roof whichever works out best.Then I either set a 10 ton snatch block on a high point behind the fallen tree for my 20 ton winch and pull it up high enough to block down or pull it taunt and side notch it to swing it away. If suitable high point is not available I bring my Mack grapple in and the rest is elementary.

 

[TreEmergencyB]

one time....

Same thing going on but about 3 other spruces right next to it. boss climbed the tallest one set a block and ran the rope through
came down went up on the roof tied off the rope to top of tree, other end of the rope went the the 5 ton in the driveway by way of another well positoned block a little pull straiting her right up. proced to put a tag line tied off to another tree so the butt didnt swing to the house, boss cut tree at ground level, i just backed up and laid her down to bed, make sure you have VERY strong rope and lots of it. For that we used "big blue" some 3/4" stuff bout 300ft long..

 

[Groundman One]

Is it a pine or an oak? Hard wood or soft? It makes a big difference.

A bit o' this and a bit o' that. Mostly balsams and poplars, but we've have a bunch of spruce and even a few maples. Never a small maple though, always a fat one. The surprising thing is the small amount of damage. I've seen holes in the roof, smashed roof edges, bent eves, but nothing major. We took five or six spruce off a small crappy cabin a few years back that had all come down at once in a big storm and there was almost no damage. Even the house where the big maple came down only had a few hundreds bucks in damage. I guess everything is built to hold a whack of snow here so a tree on the roof is no big deal.

Assuming there's no nearby tree to hang a block in and pull it off the roof with a 4 WD vehicle, or that the tree still sits on the roof once the crown is removed, then you'll need to rig a dead man under the trunk close to the exposed root ball. Throw a rope over the backside of the house to secure the piece that will stay on the roof once that gut wrenching cut is made just short of the eave. You could make the cut from the roof, but a safer option would be to make the cut from a ladder against the eave or from some kind of platform.

The dead man should be backed up with another a few feet forward of the first one. Also notch the cut on the bottom and drive a wedge on the top cut.

I've used this scenario on several hurricane jobs.

Is that why my knees shake sometimes?

 

[Burvol]

Here is a post describing such an incident, but in the winter.

http://www.arboristsite.com/showthread.php?t=48485

 

[tomtrees58]

we crane them we have and old tree guy here with a 100 ' he gets 150.00 pr hr 2 hr min not to bad tom trees

 

[VA-Sawyer]

Had the very same problem here on the 30th of March. A large Red Oak ( 35" DBH ) fell on a nice older ladies house. No easy way to get a small/medium crane close to the tree. Driveway had a large Hemlock right by the street that completely overhung the drive. Street was very steep and narrow. Powerlines along the street. Even a large crane would have been difficult to set up for the pick. Insurance company was paying for the work and wanted the price kept more on the low end.
We got on the roof and cut away section A, leaving about 30" of trunkwood above the roof line. Tree had multiple leaders resting on roof edge. Largest was about 20" at the roofline. There wasn't any large tree close enough to rig a lifting line to, so we tied 2 ropes to the top of the trunkwood and ran them in opposite directions and tied them off on 2 medium trees to keep the top from sliding left or right along the roof edge while doing the next step.
We then started cutting out sections of the trunk starting at the stump. After three sections ( about 7' each ) the remaining section of trunk was getting close to vertical.
We then put a third rope from the top over to our truck in the neighbors driveway and pulled it to vertical and then let it fall alongside the drive. It was the best plan I could come up with given the problem at hand.
Everything felt pretty much under control except the last "falling" of the trunk alongside the drive. I was in the truck pulling it to vertical and using the cell phone to talk with the guy on the port-a-wrap rope that was supposed to let it fall once I had pulled it upright enough. He let it have some slack too soon ( hoping to increase the lean in the desired direction ) and soon found it was more than he could hold. He had to let it fall sooner than planned and was telling me over the phone " Pull, pull, pull don't stop". Of course, I was planning on the truck pull to be a 'slow motion' thing and didn't have a real clear path behind the truck. Next time I will have the rope hitched to the back of the truck.
The hardest part was holding the 880 up while making the undercuts on the lower trunk sections. My arms hurt for two days after making those cuts.

 

[Raymond]

I've had a few of these before. You're right everyone of them could be done different.
Usually when the tops gone they lift off the house but really still doesn't help much.
I've never had a crane on a job yet, we've always figured out one way or another to do it, without any more damage.

I hope you tax them good on these.

 

[Raymond]

Man I wanna crane or even one to hire by the hour.
Nobody around here has one, that I've ever seen.

 

[ropensaddle]

I've had a few of these before. You're right everyone of them could be done different.
Usually when the tops gone they lift off the house but really still doesn't help much.
I've never had a crane on a job yet, we've always figured out one way or another to do it, without any more damage.

I hope you tax them good on these.

Nope price stays near the same I will never be accused of taking advantage that way and I put a high value on my reputation.

 

[Rftreeman]

why not just figure the cost of the crane in the bid price?

 

[Raymond]

Here's a few pic of my last one.

No more damage then that was already there. No crane. didn't even hurt the crap fence anymore than it was and didn't take it down.

We did have the tree for help though but the wires were there, we didn't have them dropped.

 

[Raymond]

Nope price stays near the same I will never be accused of taking advantage that way and I put a high value on my reputation.

Your bid stays the same as it would if it was solid and standing up?
You're a good man Rope.

 

[ropensaddle]

No more damage then that was already there. No crane. didn't even hurt the crap fence anymore than it was and didn't take it down.

We did have the tree for help though but the wires were there, we didn't have them dropped.

Great ya got it down fine I believe I would have left the lead in the fence for last if it went to the ground for some support to get the house clear.