What to do with a tree?

[dusty]

I cannot read a tree felling story without remembering a young fellow who cut down a large maple tree in the Pastors yard. He wanted to be absolutely certain it would fall in the proper direction. He tied a long rope to the top third of the tree trunk and the other end to his new Ford car. He pulled the car forward enough to create tension on the rope, then cut the tree trunk with a chainsaw. Do I need to tell anyone what the tree landed upon? Jim

I bet I know. It fell on the neighbors house.

[JPG]

I bet I know. It fell on the neighbors house.

"It" being the car!:D

[fjimp]

The fortunate thing being that other than a few minor scratches there was no real damage to the car. The young man always denied that occurrence, but he never made that mistake again either. Jim

[derekdarling]

I have felled trees, but only after carefully watching pros. If I could afford it, I would have someone else do it, absolutely. Having said that, some rules:
1. Start at the top and remove larger branches (see #2 BEFORE GOING ON). For this you need to be up in the tree, either on a ladder (tied off), or a high-boy (better). Have a safety belt on tied off to the tree, or over a large branch to a person on the ground.
2. Have a long rope to tie these branches off first, and have someone on the ground lower them to the ground once cut.
3. Once the branches are off, make sure they are out of the way!!!!!
4. Notch the side that the tree is to go towards. MAKE SURE THERE IS ENOUGH ROOM!!!!!
5. Cut the other side just above the first notch (creates the 'lever' spoken of above).
6. Only have the person doing the cutting near the tree when felling the trunk. THIS IS IMPORTANT!!!!!
7. Once the trunk is felled remove all the smaller branches, and cut to length if it is not going to be made into board stock.
8. If it is not your property, clean up after yourself, it's only polite.
9. And this is the most important one... IF IT DOESN'T SEEM SAFE... IT ISN'T... THINK, THEN THINK AGAIN. THEN PLAN, AND THINK SOME MORE. Having someone complain to your (living) face that you take too long is WWWAAAYYY better than people at your funeral saying 'He always rushed things'.

[edflorence]

I'm quite dubious about this wrt safety, have heard a few stories of tree felling gone wrong.

Just as there is a "danger zone" to keep in mind when using a table saw, that zone being the area directly in front of the blade on the infeed side, to which area a kickback is likely to get tossed, so there is a similar zone on the "back" side of a felled tree. As the tree begins to topple forward if there is too much hinge wood on the "front" side, the butt of the tree can move rapidly (read: moving faster than you can!) up and back, that is towards the sawyer. This is called having the tree "barber chair" and can kill you. I personally know of two deaths caused by barber chairing. Even a 7" tree has enough mass to do this. Please do some research before attempting to drop these trees. Talk to the guys at the local saw shop, watch some you tubes, go to the chain saw web sites, and take tree falling seriously.

[foxtrapper]

Ah, no. Going up into a tree to remove branches or to top is is darn dangerous. You've no escape route standing on a ladder. It is not stable and you cannot properly manuever the saw. It is far and away safer to simply fell the tree and then limb it on the ground. This is why every guidance to tree felling you find from the arborists, forestry service, and chainsaw manufacturer will tell you to drop the tree and then start slicing limbs off. Never the reverse order.

Tension to pull a tree in a particular direction is nice, but not inherently necessary, and frequently done wrong.

You don't pull in the direction you want the tree to go, you pull 90 degrees from it. That way you can keep the guiding tension on the tree as it falls, and not smash whatever is pulling the tension. You also usually want more than one thing pulling tension, from both sides. Whatever is applying the tension has to have enough mass and strength to be able to counter the forces of the falling tree.

Remember too, this is supposedly a 7" birch. That's a small tree and small cut. This is not 24" oak, or a gummy pine. As such, a fine tooth handsaw will work. It will just be slow. Which isn't inherently bad. A hand saw is easily controlled. It won't kick like a chainsaw can. It's easy to get the hinge and notches square and even. That's important, and very hard for many folk to do well or even at all.

Birches tend to grow in clusters, and lean out from the center. I'm presuming the intent is to drop the tree in the direction it already leans, especially since the complaint was about shading. Make the notch, make the back but, and let if fall. The less theatrics with controls, the less the danger and risk of injury.

[dforeman]

I will not go into detailed discussion or the how to's of felling and cutting trees. I will just leave my original recommendation as it stands. If you are a greenhorn, try to solicit help from a friend, relative, professional, etc that is more experienced. I've always found hands on instruction to be valuable in these instances.

But, there is one other subject to be considered that I will bring up. If you live in a suburb, town or city you might want to check with your local Planning and Permits office before doing any tree removal. There maybe some local ordinances that you need to be aware of before removing the trees (such as trees along erosion buffers, streams, tidal wetlands, etc). In rural areas this may not be such a big deal unless you are removing trees in a sensitive area, wetland or buffer zone. You don't want to wind up getting fined or possibly having to go to court for just simply removing a tree in your back yard.

[terrydowning]

But, there is one other subject to be considered that I will bring up. If you live in a suburb, town or city you might want to check with your local Planning and Permits office before doing any tree removal. There maybe some local ordinances that you need to be aware of before removing the trees (such as trees along erosion buffers, streams, tidal wetlands, etc). In rural areas this may not be such a big deal unless you are removing trees in a sensitive area, wetland or buffer zone. You don't want to wind up getting fined or possibly having to go to court for just simply removing a tree in your back yard.

This is why I'm hiring a licensed certified professional. Tomorrow he will be taking down a 40 ft Pine (growing close to electrical, phone and cable lines and just a matter of time until I get a bill from someone to deal with it.) that tree also makes a hell of a mess all year round. He is also topping off 3 30 ft California Pears. Hauling away all the cutoffs and removing the stump from the pine. It would take me weeks (months really) or several dump runs at $65 dollars a pop to get rid of everything, not to mention the safety issues and everything else involved in safe tree removal. I feel the $500 I'm paying for everything he is doing is well worth it.

[dforeman]

Yeah. Here in Maryland they are pretty strict about licenses. If you contract out for any tree trimming/removal work, you have to be licensed by the MD Forest Service. If you get caught otherwise, the fines can be significant. However, they don't really bother with individual rural homowners who do their own tree work.

Now as far as the zoning permits that I mentioned, the home owner is responsible for those. I see it all the time with developed subdivisions here in Maryland. The developer established a forest buffer easement as part of their mitigation requirements in order to divide the parcel into lots. Most of the time, the individual home owners do not even know that this even exists and they go and cut out the trees. And, when they get caught with an easement with no tree coverage they get fined and have to replant.

I'm not sure what tree removal costs are in CA. However, here in Maryland $500 is about right for what you are having done.

[jmchale]

The instructions that came with my chainsaw say to cut a wedgelower first on the side you want it to fall to.
Then finish the cut from the other side. This creates a hinge that should guide the tree down in the direction you want it to fall.




I've cut a few trees down, with a chainsaw, and before that with an ax. (the ax was a lot more work)

Once it is down, you can cut the branches off first then cut the main trunk down to manageable pieces to be hauled where you want (firewood, etc)

If it is a junk tree and you want to get rid of it, then you can haul it off to the back field in larger parts if you have a big enough tractor, etc.

When I've cut down pine trees, I mostly just burn them in a bonfire out back.
Other trees get turned to fire wood.