Tree service in Union County

Two large trees, and neither one had a direction to fall in.

The oak stood behind the house next to the swimming pool. It was alive and sound, with no sign of insect damage or disease anywhere on it — which is the reason it could be climbed at all. But a pool on one side, a shed on another and the house behind made a small target for anything leaving the crown. It came down from the top in pieces, each one directed away from the water.

The sycamore was in the lower front yard, between the house and the road. Same condition: alive, sound, climbable. The road is what changes that job. Wood that rolls the wrong way at the bottom of a slope ends up somewhere that is no longer your property.

Both trees came down piece by piece. Brush went through the chipper, the small loading tractor moved rounds out to the truck, and all of it left — wood and brush both, nothing stacked and nothing burned.

A two-man crew ran most of it, close to three days end to end. Two trees is not a small job when neither one can be felled whole.

Several dead pines on a wooded slope running down to a creek, and every one of them leaning.

A dead pine is a different tree to work than a live one. The wood has gone brittle, limbs let go without warning, and the lean tells you which way the tree wants to go without telling you when. Put that on a grade with loose footing under the leaf litter and there is no drop zone worth the name — anything that gets away from you keeps going downhill.

So none of them came down whole. A climber went up each one, roped in, and took the top out first, then worked down, cutting the limbs away a section at a time until there was a bare spar left and then nothing. The clip on this page is drone footage of one of those tops coming out.

Half a crew day, start to finish.

Two separate pieces of work on one property, quoted separately, because either one stood on its own.

The first was view restoration. The trees between the house and the water had filled in low and closed the sightline. The canopy was raised rather than the trees taken out — limbs off the bottom, view opened, trunks and crowns left where they were. TVA sets what may be cut on ground like this, and every cut stayed inside those guidelines. The brush was reduced and left on the property.

The second was a large tulip poplar in the back yard. That one came out whole: cut, felled and removed.

Both parts used the lift, and the lift is why the trees that stayed came through clean. Nobody spurs a tree that is not coming down, and wood comes off where the basket sets it rather than where a swing sends it. The machine worked off the driveway, and off mats where it had to cross grass.

A day and a quarter of crew time across the two.

The calendar set this job before the crew did. Leyland cypress wants pruning while it is dormant, so the work was booked for before mid-March and for dry ground. Cut them in growth and you get a flush of weak regrowth instead of the shape you were after. Dry ground mattered for a different reason: on a lake bank, wet is the difference between dragging trees down it and rutting it.

The cypress ran along the lake side of the house. Height came down moderately and each tree was shaped to grow back correctly rather than sheared into a wall. One more cypress on the side of the house got the same treatment. Every cutting from the pruning left with us.

Seven trees came out — a pine beside the stairway, the two trees lateral to it, a sycamore, and a cluster of three. Anything that could reach the house or the dock on the way down was roped and directed rather than left to a face cut.

The dock’s anchoring cable had to be dropped to the ground before any felling started. A cable under tension strung across a drop zone is not something you work around.

All seven were felled, cut into four-foot lengths, dragged down to the burn spot on the bank and stacked into a pile.

A large pine was already lying across the roof when we got there.

A tree down on a house is a different job from a tree standing beside one. The load is spread through the trunk in ways you cannot read from the ground, and the surface underneath it is damaged before anybody starts. Every cut has to come off small enough that nothing shifts and nothing rolls, because the second impact is the one that goes through the decking.

The pine came off the roof in sections, rigged and lowered rather than let go. The roof and the siding were protected as far as they could be from anything further, and ground protection mats went down where the truck and the tractor had to work.

A maple on the same property had a broken limb hanging over the gutters with its weight resting on the roof. That came off as well. A limb touching a roof works at the shingles every time the wind moves.

Other pines had uprooted and been cut into already. Those were cleared out with the rest.

One day, and the wood went out on the chip truck.

A residential power line ran straight through the Bradford pear, and the tree stood at the road.

Most of it came off with a pole saw from the ground. Everything within reach of the line was cleared first, piece by piece, until nothing left standing in the tree could touch the conductor on its way down. The order is the safety. Once the line is clear, the rest is only wood. We judged it could be done without calling for a service drop, and it was.

What was left of the trunk went across the driveway, which was the one place on the property with room to take it.

Road signs went out before anybody worked the road side of the tree. Ground protection mats went down over the driveway and the yard where the truck and the chipper had to sit.

The second part was a large dead and dying branch on a tree close to the house. That one was climbed to set rigging above the cut, so the branch could be lowered under control instead of dropped alongside a wall.

All the wood and brush left with us.

Eight of the nine trees stood in the gap between a power line and the house. That is the whole job. There was no direction to fell them where a mistake landed in open grass.

The telephone line came down first. It ran to the house straight through the work area, and it was going to be pulled off the wall by the first top that brushed it. We asked the homeowner to drop it ahead of us if there was time and told him we would do it ourselves if there was not — either way, it was off before a saw started.

Trees one through eight came down one at a time. Most needed to be directed and rigged rather than simply felled, with the pull set to keep tops off the conductor on one side and off the roof on the other.

Tree nine sat uphill of the other eight, tight off the corner of an outbuilding. Uphill changes the fall. The ground rises to meet the tree sooner than it looks like it will, and the butt has somewhere to kick. That one was directed too.

Brush and wood stayed on site. The owner wanted them, so nothing was chipped and nothing was hauled.

About five hours, start to finish.

Four trees on the eastern property line did not come down, and that was our call. A power line ran along one side of them and a gas cylinder sat on the other. They were the hardest and most dangerous trees on the property by a wide margin. We told the homeowner we were not comfortable taking them with the equipment we had, and we did not quote them. A tree that has waited this long can wait longer.

The rest was split into segments so it could be scheduled and paid for one piece at a time.

Two dead trees came first — one in the front yard, one off the back corner of the house. Both were felled and cut into lengths, and the wood and limbs stayed behind because the owner wanted them. A large tree in the front yard had its dead and dying branches taken out at the same time and the crown trimmed back to shape.

The Bradford pears between the house and the garage were topped and reduced. That section was quoted and scheduled on its own because it needed a lift to do properly — the gap between two structures is not a place to be swinging wood off a rope. The branches were left behind at the owner’s request.

Ground protection mats went down wherever the truck and gear crossed the yard.

One tree on this property had to come out, and it was the dead one on the sidehill.

Dead wood on a slope is the part of a view job that has nothing to do with the view. The fibre will not hold a hinge the way sound wood does, the fall is downhill and gaining, and the ground underfoot runs the same direction. It was felled first, before anybody was up in a rope anywhere near it.

The rest was trimming, and the work was in how little came off. Low limbs and greenery blocking the water view from the house were taken back roughly twenty to twenty-five feet up, across a stretch running from the backyard staircase and gangway out to the property line on the far side. Anything cut outright was new growth in the three- to four-inch range that TVA guidelines allow. The hardwoods themselves stayed where they were.

Cuts were adjusted with the homeowner as the work went. On a view job that is the only way to land it — what reads as an open sightline from the deck is not what it looks like from forty feet up a trunk, and it is always easier to take one more limb than to put one back.

The estimate also carried an option for two oaks beside the driveway to get the same light trimming.

A day and a quarter.