hey jeff, how's it going? no internet in my van or i would have said hi sooner...at the local library right now here in pt. reyes...glad to hear from you again...for those of you who don't know jeff, he's from the "good ol' days" here in the bay area environs...
yup, andrew was a buzz saw...i wound up working in coral cables...did a huge ficus on a roof and didn't have a crane...when i cleared all the leaders and limbs off the roof i was left with a trunk maybe forty feet in length resting on the eaves at a thirty degree angle...it was three feet across at that point...only thing that saved the house is that because ficuses are shallow rooted the tree uprooted and came to rest on a three foot retaining wall next to a sidewalk...no real damage to the house except to the eaves and a few puncture wounds in the roof...after the first day of clearing the top part of the trunk, smaller leaders, branches and debris off the roof, i still didn't know how i was going to make the money cut...first of all i had to use my 2100 with a three foot bar--i'm not that big of a guy--5'9"and 155 lbs.--to make the cut where the trunk was overlapping the roof AND i would have to undercut it first...no way i'd be able to straddle the trunk bull riding style and reach around to do the undercut, i couldn't do it from the roof, and i wasn't going to do it from a ladder--i hate working off ladders...as so often happens i put it out of my mind and woke up in the middle of the night with a solution...
the trunk still hand some long branches on the trunk that now, instead of horizontal, were vertical...so i climbed one of the stronger ones, crotched in, spidered down and trunk walked out to where i'd have to make the cut...i kept my climbing line taunt and dug my gaffs in so i could position myself to make the undercut...i had to cut a v-notch so my bar wouldn't pinch, then just leaned back and did my top cut so it matched up with the bottom one...the four foot piece came off pretty clean just taking a pit of a gutter and eave with it which was no big deal cause the customer was getting a brand new roof anyway...
got another couple of stories about andrew which i'll save for another post--one involving a crane, its operator reading a playboy between my rigging up the next piece, a $10,000 air conditioning unit and lightning...the scenarios for something going wrong with those elements are limitless...
anyone out ever run into a fellow named $10,000 butch...he's a tree guy from johnson city, tennessee...met him on a couple of different occasions working storms in north carolina...he got his name from a mailman while working a storm in prince edward county outside of dc...mailman asked butch what he'd charged for taking a tree off of the roof of a house that was across the street from where they were standing...when butch told him, the mailman laughed and said, "butch, don't you know you're working in the richest county in the usa...just for the heck of it, the next time you come to a house with a large tree on the roof, tell them $10,000..." and that's what butch did, and so the legend was spawned...for anyone thinking that's price gouging, consider that it's the insurance company picking up the tab and most insurance companies just want that tree off the roof because the longer it sits there the more structural damage it does to the load bearing timbers, not to mention you can't patch the roof 'til the tree is gone and rain water is pouring in all the openings the fallen tree has created...simple supply and demand, and being at the right place at the right time with the right equipment...
i tried it once during hurricane fran in chapel hill...it was a three story mansion with a roof steep enough you couldn't work off of it...fran was the "perfect storm" if there is such a thing...it rained for days before the winds reached hurricane strength so the ground was saturated...fran was only 90 mph when it blew in to chapel hill so what happened was the oaks and pines mostly uprooted and came over "softly" if there was plenty of branches to cushion the impact on roofs...this particular house had four bigger oaks all intertwined on the third story, AND, i had a crane...told the homeowners 9500, billed them 9000 so their 500 deductible was covered and eight hours later finito... there was a quick popper across the street i did for 1500 and after paying off the crane, the two guys working for me and tipping the operator, my one and only 10,000 dollar day...
during that same storm i did another 9500 crane job that took me three days...when i was finished, the homeowner told me i made too much money too quickly for the three day job...one of the larger oaks i removed was leaning against a big chimney and had already opened a hole in the roof...he's what i told him..."when frank sinatra sang in vegas, he didn't sing by the hour...i did no collateral damage, and i didn't read a book last night to learn how to do this...it comes from years of experience and that's what you're paying for...besides the insurance company is picking up the tab..." this was his attempted comeback..."well if i had the equipment and my wife weren't here to stop me, i would have done it myself..." to which i retorted..."the next time you want to do a tree job give your old lady $300 to go shopping and i'll loan you my climbing gear..."
okay, time for a cold one...be safe out there boys and girls...
