Asking For Advice From The Pros - How To Handle Damage From Tree Company

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HappyHomeowner

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Fine folks, this is the first thread I've posted here and I am so thankful to have found this forum! I have already learned a lot here just by searching through stuff and wow this place is absolutely incredible. Today I am here to humbly ask for advice from the pros about how to handle some damage done by a professional tree company that came to our place recently to remove a tree. I am going out of my way not to come to any conclusions on my own here and to ask the pros what they would think is the right thing for me to do. In other words I'm trying not to be a big jerk and over-react about some damage done and also the fact the company's crew didn't exactly do what the company's project manager and I agreed on.

To set the stage here and start with the positive, I have used this company twice before with wonderful results. They are a really reputable local company and have always had good reviews, good ratings with BBB, good standing at Regional Building, etc. The entire team I dealt with this time was professional and polite as they always were before and the actual crew was careful and courteous and got a large three-trunk or "tri-dominant" Ponderosa Pine down without doing major damage to anything or anyone.

Now for the things that I am upset about (without knowing if I should be upset about them). First I explained and emphasized to the project manager who came out to bid the job that I didn't want super large sections of trunk dropped down on to the ground because I was worried about damage to the waste systems and sprinkler systems underground and also because each of the three trunks leaned in a really awkward and also dangerous direction towards something else such as fencing, other trees, landscaping, etc. We agreed that everything that wasn't safe to drop would be lowered.

When the crew actually came out I showed them the tree and asked if they got the information from the project manager and they claimed they did. They shared some strategy with me about how they would rig everything up to lower what wasn't safe to drop and then drop the rest. I thanked them and let them get to work. Again to start with the positive, they got the whole tree down without doing major damage and they always were completely careful as far as safety stuff, rigging, roping, personal protective equip, etc. I was really impressed. However after about a few hours of them out there I heard a loud thump in the house that almost sort of shook the house and when I went outside I saw that they had dropped two super large sections of trunk (26 foot long and 30 foot long) diagonally right down on the ground! On top of that one of the nearby trees was clobbered with about 8 of its biggest branches on one side totally stripped off! I was first worried about whether trunks that big dropped down could do damage to my house or anything underground and then I was upset with the actual damage already visible to the tree that got clobbered.

So with all that in mind I need to ask for advice from you folks. Is it at all possible that those dropped tree trunks did damage to the house which was 35 feet away from where the top of the trunks hit the ground? If it helps I used the log weight calculator that was linked with another thread here and have calculated each trunk to weigh between 1500 and 2000 pounds. Also what is reasonable for a HappyHomeowner (haha) to expect here as far as whether damage to other trees is "acceptable" or not? To be totally fair to the company (who again I absolutely want to portray here as legit and good and all that), the tops of all three trunks leaned waaayyy over the other trees and fences and landscaping and stuff so it wasn't incredibly easy to drop things without damage, but, that is exactly why we all agreed to lower what wasn't safe to drop. I'm sure from the perspective of professional arborists a 26 and 30 foot section of Ponderosa Pine is nothing to drop down but to me that seemed super heavy and had a helluva thump when it hit hard ground. And I'm also sure from the perspective of professional arborists that some collateral damage in some situations is inevitable. So again I humbly ask for advice here; I haven't talked to the company yet and am trying to avoid that before getting guidance here again just to avoid being a big jerk if this isn't really something to be totally upset about.

Thanks in advance!!!
 
Don't worry about the house. Hold payment until the rep comes out and looks over the job. Let them make it right. Adjustment should be made for the damaged tree.
Thank you for your advice it is absolutely appreciated!

When you say don't worry about the house, from your experience, is a tree trunk section of 26 to 30 feet long and 20 inches (at bottom) to 12 inches(at top) in diameter considered small and safe to just totally drop? At would point would it be a problem to drop down a totally limbless trunk thirty feet away from a structure. I'm trying to do the math on a 2000 pound log falling down flat and from a height and it seems immense to me (but I don't know any better actually).

One thing I maybe should mention is that the tree they "clobbered" was a Juniper about twenty five feet tall and skinny and so when I say that they knocked off "8 big branches" that comment is relative to that tree, and those big branches are like 1.5" to 2.0" in diameter and about 6 - 8 feet long. Just to give a good scale of things. Still that one side of the tree is clobbered by all accounts and the only things left are some small branches of 3 - 6 feet in length here and there. I instinctively feel bad for the tree; I don't think it will die from damage but it is totally lopsided now.

Lastly, I hadn't actually thought ahead to adjusting anything with the cost of the job I was just worried about any real damage or possible damage but am I interpreting what you wrote to say that no damage to other trees is "acceptable" normally and therefore a cost adjustment is appropriate? Again my main worry was damage done to the house by the tree trunks thumping the ground so hard and heavy and what to know and what to do about that. Thanks again for all the advice I really appreciate it!
 
I wouldn't expect to see any damage to the house from the fallen tree trunks. If there is then there was some serious structural problems before the tree work was performed.

Is the juniper a native red cedar?

Ok thanks for that advice and to clarify there isn't visibly any visible damage anywhere, the house just shook very slightly and it sort of surprised me enough to ask the experts here about it. Since I heat with wood ( I don't usually use much Pine for firewood but this would be free) I was planning to buck the logs up and individually weigh the pieces to verify the accuracy of the log weight link I found here but the shorter one is like 1500 pounds and the longer one 2000 pounds and I am pretty sure pros drop down much more weight than that and maybe a lot closer than 30 feet from a structure?

As an amateur I would call the tree an upright juniper tree. It isn't a "juniper bush" as in multiple legs; it has one single trunk straight up with short pleasant smelling needles. The broken branches do strongly smell of cedar oil so I'm sure it is possible to be a native red cedar but when I was googling those just now they look a lot bigger and bushier than this? I should have mentioned that the tree company pruned the broken branches back already to the trunk so I am assuming that is about all I can do to help the whole thing now?

Thanks Again!
 
From the title of this thread.

"How To Handle Damage From Tree Company"​


It seems you have already decided that there is damage to the house, without evidence.

Several here have mentioned that they think damage is highly unlikely.

Yet it seems to be your driving interest.

Can you post some photos of the damaged tree so we could help assess the extent of your suffered damage?
 
Weigh the pieces?.......Don't waste your time trying to prove something that didn't happen......The house is probably fine. I'd be more worried about any septic or irrigation system damage if the butt was dropped close to any underground structures or pipes.
Collateral damage is not at all inevitable if the work is done properly. If something is damaged its usually due to lack of training, laziness, lack of proper supervision or trying to rush the job. In your case the crew was probably trying to finish the removal before the end of the day, and somebody decided that dropping the standing butt in one piece would be less time consuming than sectioning it down. Probably not the best choice if there was any sort of piping under the yard..... You'll probably find a fairly significant depression in the ground when you remove the wood too.
Don't touch anything, take pictures of everything....call the company right away and get a supervisor or manager out to your house. Get a second opinion from a licensed arborist concerning the damage to any other trees.
 
Your house is fine, tree trunks thumping the ground isn't going to be an issue. Damage to plants and shrubs of value is unacceptable unless decussed beforehand. Always give the contractor an opportunity to make it right.

Understood, and I will do what you advised. Thanks for all the advice thus far folks I really really appreciate it and my heart rate here is already a lot lower than it was when I was writing out my first questions for you all. Thanks Again.
 
From the title of this thread.

"How To Handle Damage From Tree Company"​


It seems you have already decided that there is damage to the house, without evidence.

Several here have mentioned that they think damage is highly unlikely.

Yet it seems to be your driving interest.

Can you post some photos of the damaged tree so we could help assess the extent of your suffered damage?

Uhh, I'm sincerely very sorry if you may have missed it but the damage that I was referring to in the thread title was the real damage done to the tree and also the possible damage done to the house. I specifically stated that I came here to ask the pros because as a "happy homeowner" I didn't actually know any better about the house thing or what to do about definite damage done to the trees but I don't need the pros to tell me that my tree with eight of its biggest branches broken is "damaged". Sorry if that wasn't totally clear.
 
Uhh, I'm sincerely very sorry if you may have missed it but the damage that I was referring to in the thread title was the real damage done to the tree and also the possible damage done to the house. I specifically stated that I came here to ask the pros because as a "happy homeowner" I didn't actually know any better about the house thing or what to do about definite damage done to the trees but I don't need the pros to tell me that my tree with eight of its biggest branches broken is "damaged". Sorry if that wasn't totally clear.

I would like to help I.D. the tree and maybe see where the tree company intended to lay the trunk. Also would like to see the pruning cuts just to see what kind of cuts the arborist made. Photos would be great.
 
Weigh the pieces?.......Don't waste your time trying to prove something that didn't happen......The house is probably fine. I'd be more worried about any septic or irrigation system damage if the butt was dropped close to any underground structures or pipes.
Collateral damage is not at all inevitable if the work is done properly. If something is damaged its usually due to lack of training, laziness, lack of proper supervision or trying to rush the job. In your case the crew was probably trying to finish the removal before the end of the day, and somebody decided that dropping the standing butt in one piece would be less time consuming than sectioning it down. Probably not the best choice if there was any sort of piping under the yard..... You'll probably find a fairly significant depression in the ground when you remove the wood too.
Don't touch anything, take pictures of everything....call the company right away and get a supervisor or manager out to your house. Get a second opinion from a licensed arborist concerning the damage to any other trees.

Thanks for this advice, what I was trying to say about weighing the pieces is I wanted to verify the log weight link that I found here. I'm not saying I'd know the difference done between a 1500 pound log vs. a 15000 pound log hitting the ground, I'm just saying I'd like to verify the accuracy of the link there is all. Since I'm going to buck the whole thing up anyway, weighing the whole thing is as simple as putting each piece on a scale and then adding them all up, trunk by trunk. When I'm actually harvesting firewood here and loading up my trailer in the woods I almost always take the scale not so I can weigh each piece but just because by weighing them from time to time I can make sure more or less overall weight on the trailer. There's big difference between dead and almost dead in terms of the weight I've learned. I also have a hardwood source here that is a city tree contractor and they allow folks to take small sections from their freaking huge pile and put it into vehicles or trailers for burning or woodworking or whatever but they don't allow any cutting onsite so sometimes I take the scale and wobble something over to it to see what it weighs before I hump it into the trailer. Anyway I am just interested in learning how close or far off the link was.

As far as everything else you wrote you were exactly right from what I was able to tell ... they were trying to finish up faster. There is an underground sprinkler system that is probably pretty shallow right below where the tree trunks fell. We don't have septic here and as far as I know everyone's waste water system goes from the front of the house to the street so it definitely wouldn't be above my waste water (I've had the system scoped before so I know for a fact mine doesn't go down that way) and it probably isn't above anybody else's either. So only sprinkler system stuff right below but that whole system has been blown out for winter for some time now and that actually might make damage to it less likely without incompressible water in all the lines. Either way I won't know until I use the system again sometime in Spring. With the tubing the system uses being so thin and so flexible I cant image how the tree trunks dropping down would hurt the lines and none of the trunks hit the heads so we are probably good to go there.

Thanks again for all the advice here!
 
I would like to help I.D. the tree and maybe see where the tree company intended to lay the trunk. Also would like to see the pruning cuts just to see what kind of cuts the arborist made. Photos would be great.

Awesome I would love to learn the actual species as well as whatever I can do at this point to help the tree out. I'll try to take some shots tomorrow or Friday at the latest as we are finishing a small snow storm now. Thanks Again!
 
In my tree service days I saw a lot of damage, but never structural damage to a house caused by a big log hitting the ground nearby. It's too bad about your other tree being damaged, it ain't easy to have a tree repaired.
 
Hi folks, here are some pics of the tree/s that got damaged when the ponderosa pine top was dropped down on top of them. You can pretty clearly see one side on the right in these particular pics being full and the left side being, uhh, not full. There's a pretty good pile of broken off branches on the ground too from these trees specifically as opposed to the ponderosa pine tree that was removed. Hopefully in the second shot you can see the pruning they did to remove the broken branches.

Thanks again for all the advice.
 

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Looking at picture 2244, if they were my trees I would have dropped the smaller tree (the damaged one). I think the pair are too close to each other, as it appears that the branch formation on the larger tree is being impacted. Better to have one healthy tree, than two that are fighting with each other and suffering as a result.
 
John L beat me to it. The first thought that struck me was that I'd lose that near tree anyway.

In commercial work you always feel bad about damaging a keeper tree, but the damage you show is really nothing--it happens sometimes.
 
Looking at picture 2244, if they were my trees I would have dropped the smaller tree (the damaged one). I think the pair are too close to each other, as it appears that the branch formation on the larger tree is being impacted. Better to have one healthy tree, than two that are fighting with each other and suffering as a result.

Hi, thanks for the advice! It is hard to tell from the pictures there but the smallest tree was actually already almost like that and very few of its branches got broken actually by the big top above dropping down. It is unfortunately the largest tree which took the most damage. The smallest tree got the most of the shade from the ponderosa pine that was taken down so it struggled the whole time. Also unfortunately when these three trees were planted (or popped up on their own) they were too close together from the get-go. I was and still am hoping that with the larger tree above removed the smaller trees will do better but I was already thinking that I might have to take out the two trees that are on the opposite sides of the big tree and just let the big tree live without fighting the small trees. Now, with all the damage the bigger tree has I'll have to wait a while to determine that I think. Thanks again though I totally agree they are all too close together.
 
Hi folks, as an update to this thread, I followed all the advice that I got here and calmly contacted the Project Manager to explain the concerns that I had. I didn't express any extra aggravation or deal any demands or expectations or anything I just told him the concerns and shut up so he could handle it the way that he typically would. He, as he always was before, was polite and professional and scheduled some time to look at it all.

While he was here I tried to emphasize that the crew was always careful and polite and professional but I basically was just worried about the broken branches from the trees and also the possibility of possible damage done to the sprinkler system (it turns out that one of the limbs that was only slightly sawed off of the trunk punched and poked a hand-sized-hole a foot or so deep down into the yard three inches from a sprinkler head and another limb missed another head by about another foot).

Ohh, I also told him that I previously was all worked up about any damage done to the house until I ultimately was talked off the ledge by you fine folks (just joking, I didn't say any of that thanks to you all talking me off the ledge already haha).

I found out right away that either the Crew Chief just automatically told the Project Manager what happened here that day, or when the Project Manager asked him about it, the Crew Chief told him so there was no attempt at all to hide anything at all and that speaks volumes to me. Apparently the CC explained to the PM that yes they were trying to finish up faster, yes they missed the mark slightly and yes they should have slowed down somewhat. The PM very freely volunteered this without bashing them either and this also speaks volumes to me.

The PM thoroughly looked the area over and actually acknowledged all the things I was worried about. He told me that if there was anything wrong with the sprinkler system when we power it up in Spring they would take care of it. He also told me that although the crew already pruned all the broken branches back, if we wanted them to they could come back and even out the other side slightly just for symmetry and he also told me they would come back in Spring to do a deep root fertilization treatment just to help the tree bounce back.

He didn't offer and I didn't ask for any price adjustments. I actually don't feel it would be right for me to accept an adjustment now basically just because the more and more I looked at it all while I was cleaning up the debris that was left (I asked the company to just take the tree down becuase I wanted to do the cleanup to save money and also to get the firewood from it) I could tell that several of the tips of the branches that came from the Ponderosa Pine were actually woven into and tangled into the tips of the branches from the Junipers there. So that sort of tell s me that unless they both somehow lowered the individual top branches while also pulling them and twisting them to unwrap and unwrangle them from the bottom branches of the other trees, stuff probably would've broken when lowered anyway. In fact I strongly suspect that the way they notched the top of the tree was perfectly fine and that actually what happened was as the top fell, and while it was tangled into the bottoms of those other three trees, those other three trees sort of tugged the top into them further as the top dropped down past them if that makes any sense. My point is simply that yes there was some damage done to those smaller three trees but my main goal in getting this work done was to safely remove another highly hazardous tree without hurting anything or anyone and they did that so we're good to go as far as I'm concerned.

Anyway, I wanted to update this thread and I'll add two pictures that will hopefully help. I finally cleared up most of the debris that was left so it is easier to see the three trees from the "front" and also see some of the "carnage", haha, that came off of these trees. Maybe someone can still ID these trees for me and share any extra advice on what to do to help them now. I think Del was offering help to ID these but maybe they are not natively around wherever he works so anyone else is free to give their advice too. Thanks again folks.
 

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The standing trees look to be juniper, but we're a little far away from details. The wood on the ground is pine, probably Ponderosa.

As far as "helping" your remaining trees, the ones with a few branches removed, they really need no help. In a year or two you'll see that they have suffered none.

Although I might remove the small one to favor the others. Hard to say, as they look to be freestanding, so the competition might be less of an issue.
 
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