I like doing trees on houses. Every job is different and unless you've got a crane, you've got to be spontaneous, figure out the angles, swing, and balance points, and revise your plan as the job develops. Plus, if it's an insurance job, the money is great.
I think big trees that have been blown over into other trees and are over buildings to be especially tricky. Any thoughts on those?
That was what our Friday afternoon job was. A fair sized poplar was blown over into the neighbour's maple, and over the neighbour's fence.
(Once again, dig the funky artwork bee-lo.)
So my climber goes up the maple
(the brown one), a big tree, and ties off. Then he ties my pull rope to the trunk of the poplar
(the red one, A), passes it through a crotch in the maple and I lock it up in the Porta-Wrap. The he removes the top of the poplar in pieces until it's just the trunk resting in the maple. About 45' up. I unlock the rope in the porta-wrap, leave several wraps on it as the trunk is very heavy, he cuts it loose and I lower the trunk very slowly. I'm probably over the weight limit for my porta-wrap so we're doing everything very slowly, very smoothly, no shocks.
My climber is down now and we decide to stop the trunk about two-feet above the fence (B). Now, stupid me is really scratching my head because after we cut a few feet off the base of the tree, the tree is now two inches above the fence. What do we do. The tree is far to big to manhandle, too heavy to push, we're stuck. For some reason we thought we'd be able to swing it or push it clear of the fence. Not a chance.
So we did what any good tree man would do. We locked up the trunk and disassembled the section of fence under the truck, then lowered it onto the ground, cut it up, then put the fence back together. No damage, no stress, everyone safe, but we could have thought it out a bit better. Oh well, we're always rusty when the season opens.