Heart pounding tree felling

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Mustang71

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I was walking around in the woods today and noticed a rotting tree leaning over my neighbors power line. Every time the wind blew the crackes would get bigger. I didn't take a before pic cause I was unsure how it would end. I managed to throw a rope around it about 20 feet up and pull it with the come a long. Little by little tensioning it and cutting. With my ms290 in pieces I had to use the husky 450 which worked fine.

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I pulled it over and once it started to fall I ran like hell. Half way through this I realized that if I break this rope I'm screwed cause it's falling in the power line. It fell on another tree so I cut that one down and while cutting I herd the large Crack I threw the saw and ran again.

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Not a big tree but it's about 50 feet tall and would have taken the power line down and would have hurt if it fell on me. Now it's beer time.
 
I have cut my last hazard tree. About 4 years ago I was clear cutting a locust grove. Last one was a big black locust that had a slight lean over an occupied trailer house. Put two cables on it as high as I could get on my 12' extension ladder. One was an anchor hooked to a comalong, basically a 2X1 mechanical advantage. The other ran through a snatch block to the thruck, also rigged for 2X1. Cut try to pull and truck would break traction, cut a bit more, nope. Put more strain on the comealong to gain a bit, pull. Rinse repeat. It finally fell where I wanted it but I was sweating blood before it went there. Swore I would nver, ever again do a hazard tree. A year later I paid a tree served $850 to remove a spruce in my backyard. Could I have felled it? Probably yes but...
 
Those are the kind of things I like watching on YouTube not doing lol.

My neighbors power line is a secondary line so the power company doesn't maintain it. It's about 1500 feet long luckily I only own 700 feet next to it. He thinks I'm responsible for any tree that falls on it which I have read is not true. I have read I'm responsible for branches laying on it and taking down dead trees that could fall on it.

I've taken down 2 trees so far and cut 2 branches off of it. I hate doing it every time cause my heart is always pounding.
 
Those are the kind of things I like watching on YouTube not doing lol.

My neighbors power line is a secondary line so the power company doesn't maintain it. It's about 1500 feet long luckily I only own 700 feet next to it. He thinks I'm responsible for any tree that falls on it which I have read is not true. I have read I'm responsible for branches laying on it and taking down dead trees that could fall on it.

I've taken down 2 trees so far and cut 2 branches off of it. I hate doing it every time cause my heart is always pounding.
My power company will take down any tree along the power line right of way on private property when requested provided it has the height to potentially damage lines. I'd check with your provider to see if they will do the same. They have taken down about 75 trees for me over the years.
 
They don't own the line though my neighbor put it up himself idk y putting it 10 feet from a tree line seemed smart but whatever. The power company came through and trimmed all the trees last year around their lines and didn't touch this one.
 
I would double check with their office. Ours will maintain right up to the box on the house if you ask. They don't trim yard trees unless you ask otherwise.
 
It's his line on his property which is next to my tree line so I sort of think he would be the one who wants to maintain it. I don't really think that's my job I just trim small stuff out of courtesy and take care of obvious dead stuff. The guy who owns the property behind me which runs along the rest of the line doesn't do anything about any of those trees.
 
Mustang71,

Just my two cents: If you ever have another one, make that call to the power company. Even if the line isn't theirs and even if they won't cut the tree, they can be very helpful - anything from disconnecting the power to the line while you fall a tree to telling your neighbor that line clearance issues are his responsibility so he can either move the line, reach a maintenance agreement with his neighbors or face disconnection.

Ron
 
Yea it was a small tree the bigger ones I won't touch. I'm pretty sure his line maintenance is his responsibility but he's in his 70s and I'm 28 so I think he just tries to make it seem like it's my problem. But I think it's the same situation that if a tree falls on your house it's your problem not your neighbors cause trees are unpredictable. If any of my trees do take his line down I'm calling the insurance company and they can handle it.
 
My power company will take down any tree along the power line right of way on private property when requested provided it has the height to potentially damage lines. I'd check with your provider to see if they will do the same. They have taken down about 75 trees for me over the years.

I got turned down. Clear cutting a willow grove for a farmer, 3 trees have wicked leans to the power line. My eyeball says it will be close if the tip top small stuff hits or not the line. Sent pictures asked them to take a look and decide if clear to fall. They wouldn't even send a man out to look at it. Inland Power Co Spokane, Wa. Like idt or not those trees will come down, if not cut down they will fall on thier own in the next few years. I took 3 out this summer that had fallen in the lasst few years.
 
Out provider is pretty good. The fourth time I asked them to come out (over a period of 6 years) they did have someone stop by first to verify all the trees, and they did take every one . On the third trip the lead man refused to cut two trees I had tagged. One he was right about and the other would have destroyed the box/meter had it fallen that way so I convinced it otherwise with a chain hoist.
 
I called the power company here to tell them that one of their poles on my property had giant holes in it from wood peckers and they looked at it and never changed it. Then the next spring they had their trimming company out trimming trees and a month later they show up with a pole and change one near my driveway that didn't have holes in it. Not sure y they did that one over the other one. The tree company did a nice job trimming though.
 
Replaying my last dodgy attempt at hazard tree falling in my mind is like watching a Monty Python skit. Idiocy on a grand scale that's entertaining in hindsight but terrifying at the time. This was a fairly good sized tree with just a slight lean towards a house, with the homeowner and kids looking on from a window in the potential (if SHTF) impact zone. Tree sat back before I put a wedge in, couldn't get bar out, didn't bring enough wedges, not strong enough rope, not high enough in the tree, could only pull from 60' away, so was back and forth, up and down the hill to and from tractor at least 20 times. If that rope had broken, as it had once already, it would have been a nightmare. Took about two days to recover from what was about 20 minutes of 100% panic.

Talk about amateur hour. So many mistakes it is beyond embarrassing.
 
Yea I realized that I hooked my rope through the tiny d ring I was using to attach weight to the rope to throw it and not through the loop. And of course this was after I pulled the rope tight lol and it was a nylon rope from harbor freight. Like I said I like watching hazard cutting on YouTube not doing it.
 
Seems like every tree I take down at my cottage is a hazard tree. My heart is pounding a mile a minute when I take some of them down.


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Several of those tall ones in that pic are gone now.



I've taken down about 38 trees there so far. Of those I've had about 12 done by the pros. Those were too big and too close to the cottage for me to mess with. I probably should've had them taken down another 10 more. Would've saved me some gray hairs...
 
Cutting down dangerous trees is always a heart pounding experience. I have always sought help when doing the job -- 1) two heads ought to think better then one and 2) if I get injured 911 gets called in seconds vs. hours or longer.
 
We're on a steep rocky hill and there's a very large dying oak that's between our house and the lines and the pole with our transformer. Given that it is uphill from the lines and road, it fairly towers over them and will simply crush that pole when it falls. It could hit the house I suppose but it has a pretty good lean the other way over the lines.

Met Ed (First energy) hired some poor guy in a weeny bucket truck last year who trimmed some of the easy little stuff and left all the big line hazards. That was probably their entire line maintenance budget for the next decade, so I'll give them a call when the transformer is on the road. Darn sure I'm not gonna touch it!
 

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