concrete, with a nice bark coating

[treeman82]

hey guys. today i was workin for this guy. second job i have done for him. second time he has paid right away in green. he told me that he has a tree job that he needs me to look at and do. its about 20 minutes from here. i dont know all the specifics yet. however he said that it is an oak tree, that it is about 4' at the base, is about 50+ feet tall, he thinks its about that big. and here is the nice part. concrete cavity work. he is a builder, but i am doign work at his homes. i believe he has a couple of excavators and what not. so my question is this. how do you cut down a tree that big that has concrete in it? again, i havent seen this thing yet, but it is 4' at the bottom, and i dont think that there will only be an inch of concrete. i am thinkin more like a foot or two at least.

 

[treeclimber165]

I have personally gone out to cut down a 'little' tree, approx. 3+ feet diameter, top snapped off in a tornado at about 25'. The brush was all gone, so all we had to do was dice up the trunk and wheel it to the truck. Was already planning an early lunch. Someone had done 'cavity work' on this thing long ago, dumping several bags of concrete powder into the hole at the top. Everywhere we tried to cut, we found more concrete. 2 frustrating days later, my fingers raw from filing chains, we got a Bobcat to drag the thing out and load it on the truck whole. That 25' trunk cost us about $3000+ in expenses and labor, although we charged 1/10th of that.

 

[Treebeard]

Save yourself some grief & call up a backhoe operator

 

[Deere John]

I'm thinking like Treebeard.

I too did (just) one of these - only about 30" - a silver maple.
I was lucky and was able to fall it once topped without having to block it down.

I used my backhoe to lift it onto a tri-axle trailer. We whittled it down as much as possible, and I still had to take the front bucket off the backhoe in order to get enough lift capacity. They had filled a frost crack about 14' worth with the bagged mortar mix.

My thought is if you can fall it, let the owner with the excavator deal with the trunk - more or less in 1 piece. Like Treeclimber said - major danger to your bottom line.

 

[Eric E.]

Take the tree down to the point of the concrete. Have the owner bring over an excavator to push the remaining stick over. He can then load it into/onto truck or trailer. Any decent size excavator will be able to do it in short order.

Eric