9' Lombard Bites the Dust!!

[rbtree]

Huge poplar being removed by Seattle Tree Preservation. Some vid from yesterday, day 4 of probably 5, five man crew, plus stump grinding! Wow! 2nd costliest removal I've ever heard of. #1 was a 35k tree in New Zealand years ago.

They rent my 13 hp ported 3120 now and then. I brought it over, and stuck around and played cameraman! Great crew. Too bad the crane broke. It'll be fixed Monday, but they have to move the wood a good 15 feet to get to a reasonable radius for their new old 23 ton National. Over the house with a 23 tonner? Yikes!!

The tree was about 150 feet tall, and 9'4" in diameter. Produced close to 100 yards of chips.... will probably fillboa 3 40 yard dumpsters of wood... and a boat load of stump grindings....though, as can be seen in the vid, it's way rotten!

 

[MasterBlaster]

Lemme know if you need me to get that trunk down, Roger!

 

[Pelorus]

I guess it was too far gone to consider a regimen of retrenchment pruning?
Sounds like a Historic Lombard specimen!

 

[rbtree]

You got it, Butch!! You'll need to sharpen that axe...and stock up on anti-imflammatories.......

The STP owner told me he'd tried to see if a bigger crane would fit, but with no luck. I dunno, but it looked doable to me, especially with Image Crane's 38 tonner, which could have reached the tree and probably been good for 3500 lb...... Dealing with huge wood like that sucks without a crane. I hope they don't find any more foreign material in the tree...a nail got their 660 chain, and that 42" bar on my 3120 passed a mere inch from that brick.......

 

[deevo]

Wow some huge wood there Roger, yeah that sucks the crane broke down!

 

[rbtree]

Pelorus, nope, no Neville Fay retrenchment for that poplar....or any, lol! The largest in North America was near downtown Seattle. It was about 35 feet around. Fell in 2006. The largest lead went across the street and totalled a house. The rest did a fair bit of damage to another house, also across the street.

I bid a massive one over a year ago, for 5000-6000, plus 550 a load to dispose of the wood. someone else said $4000. It was a good 7.5 feet in diameter, I think. Access not bad, but still a major job. I think its still there. The outfit that bid that low was likely hojo's, who would have taken a lot longer than a good crew, and done who knows how much damage.

There's two sets of giant poplar removal images on my flickr page, besides the images from this tree, that are right on the top.

Link is below...

 

[zogger]

That's a whopper!