Climbers Input Needed............

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tshanefreeman

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A local customer of mine has an American Elm that is in its initial stages of DED (Dutch Elm Disease) and therefore will have to be removed in the near future. I haven't been approached to conduct the work, however, I do imagine that I will be receiving a call in the next day or two.

The question that I have for any climbers out there is:

How would you go about removing this co-dominant tree without a central leader..............confused, just refer to the attached picture.

The right side clearly hangs over the house and will have to be rigged out. There is no nearby trees that can be used to set up a speedline. The left side will be no problem to remove, for it doesn't have the same degree of lean and is over an open front yard.

Any input would be greatly appreciated..........for I like to prepare in advance for expected work. Thanks.

PS: I am strickly a climber............no bucket truck in my line-up!
 
from the pic it looks like a simple tree. go up the left side. tie in at that nice crotch on the right most lead. when you up there see if you could set a line trhough 2 of the upper crotch's. take out the rest of the left side on your way down. if you don't trust the upper crotch's to swing the limbs from. just go out on them and butt tie them over. if you go out far enough they will clear the house. butt tie a little wood. then drop the rest. go back to the lead your tied in on , pull your climbing line out , tie off the rigging line and slap a notch and pull the top out.

sorry i cant draw like mike but its the same principle with a back up plan.
 
Like Mike said, I do these in my sleep. Daily. Did 3 Yesterday. This is a 3 hour job tops. Easy access, 2 limbs over a easy, low pitch roof to rope off and flop the rest (or piece it down to be kind to your ground crew).
Either rope the limbs back to the yard or down on the roof. You even got a real good tie-off for your lifeline. But if you rope the limbs back to the yard, make sure you have your lifeline clear of the swing path. And try to balance your roped limbs about 60%-40% or even 2/3-1/3 with the brush end a little heavier than the butt end. Brush dragging down across a roof won't hurt it, will only sweep it off for ya.


(3 hours includes loading wood and cleanup, probably 60 minutes climbing time)
 
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DWT between the two codom tips and swing big peices out tip heavy. That is light stuff.

What I would do is use the the GRCS to pick the right section up onto the left then lower it down, the crash the left side out. Might be able to take the right side out in one or two picks.
 
shane the only thing i would do different is set my lowering line through 2 crotch's. the one you have and the one you show the climbing line at. i prefer to use 2 crotchs in case one fails. you could get away with tieing in the lower crotch. since you dont have to go too far out on those limbs to clear the house. plus it gives you the option of swinging the left house side towards the back if need be. if you tie in at the lower crotch you could just throw the rigging line though the other 2 crotch's and your on your way.
 
One Suggestion
A) Leave the easy side for high, multiple, vertical,frictional supports, unload any unnecessary weight from them, you can now at least put that much back on. Thread the line for a lot of friction on these unloaded, multiple supports. Maybe throw through a lower tree, just to take some more anchor load out of the formulae. High friction will also take pull off the control line, thereby unloading the anchors further, it also will allow less line as to be stretched,that we are going to minimize, to maximize that unforgiveng cable like tightness to our advantage We also are going to werk the heck out of the support of the hinge, and only use the supports for 5 seconds.

B)Place line to load, far out, but so green will be heavy end. Perhaps throwing through an open fork and swinging back, catching and hitching to load. This particular load is even cocked back, seems to self tighten more.

C)We are going to tighten, knotch and have this machine self tighten even so much mopre that the rope will be like steel cable per the weight of the load. When the load can't stretch the line anymore, it will stop the load from going down and cause it to ark around especially if the hinge ushers in the same direction and doesn't fight it. So the guys will pull it as tight as possible, i might jump off a branch and impact my wieght on the line as they do, then might jump up between anchors, or anchor and load and sweat it out (a la' Brion Toss). If there is a fork out far enough on the load, ill throw the line through it then hitch to the load's belly so that all tightening is worth (2x-friction of rope curve on load-angle) per pulling strategy thread.

D)Then come down far enough to cut that the length between the load's pivot and the cut is a lever for laying the load into and prestretching the line(also a balast for the green end after tear off), the longer that lever the more the self tightening action,, the farther out the head will pivot while the hinge still holds on, but keep the green end heavy. Place a perfect, non crossing wide pivoting facecut for hinge that faces and guns exactly to the delivery point or as close enough that it won't be overloaded. The line will be carrying a lot of the load, so you can get some action here too, make the angles of the hinge and arc asked of line co-arborating, not fighting.

E)Eliminate some of the bottom hinge wood, leaving the holding wood on top, ushering over. As you cut down you empower the machine, come down and over at angle,like chasing load into the hinge. Don't cut through the hinge! This techqnique even gets support from pushing the load into the hinge tightly! Sometimes the guys have to give it some slack, to load the hinge with the new weight, to cause it to begin to fold. That's Okay, it is easier to give it slack at the end than it is too tighten it! Sometimes i use this technique, just to be able to remotely release the laod into the folding hinge without me around in species that splinter easy.

F)Try not to let it tear off unless the loads hitchpoint is beteewn you and the anchor, or the load could pull into you. If this is going to happen as it is hanging on to hinge after arking, have guys lower the load until hitch of load is between you and the anchor placing its weight to pull away from you..
 
har har, i actually have a hobbs pulley and my employer has some other brand one. i realy only use them for hinging over big wood and tieing in off buildings. why use a pulley when a crotch will do. why bother going up to set a pulley when you could just throw a rope? i hate going up and down the same lead twice. i certainly won't go back up to retrieve gear.

a few weeks back i finished a tree that a climber got hurt in. by pieceing together the story and seeing the tree. (his pulley was still up there) i feel he go hurt because he was useing the pulley. i feel he relyed on it too much. it was too far away for the piece to swing so he set up a line over a dead piece to take the swing out , and the dead piece broke out and knocked him out of the tree and landed on him. i couldn't figure out where he was tied in or why he was not belted in. i finished the tree whith nothing but butt ties and chunking the wood. i have alot of gear for when i need it. but i won't waste time when i feel a perfectly good crotch will do.
 
Or all the same as before, only the self-torquing and tightening is applied at a diffrent angle. The curve in line around the load, wants to come out a s the line tightens rolling the limb around as it reaches around and tries to pull from the first firm hitchpoint on hte load. If you come back far enough on cut make a beautiful hinge, with a pretightened line, the limb will start to fall forward tightening itself more, folding it around when the load can't stretch the line anymore and compounding the action of the hinge and lines pull (were it to a more neutral point of the load). Takes good hinging wood sometimes, many variables. This hitchpoint can be safely thrown from ground.

So the limb falling forward slowly on hinge causes the already tightened line to pull the limb around on hinge; its size, mass and leverage is now powering this machine, the more it has,the more it works on our side, in its own class. The hinge forms a pivoting support agreeing where the limb will go. Having the allowable arc of the line and the hinge in tandem of intersection is very powerful, as is having a line so tight it can usher sideways movment of a horizontal limb on the wide mouth hinge. Sometimes in this way support anchors almost inline with heght of the load itself, as this self tightens more than overhead support, as hitch moves directly away from anchor, when like that. It can be done if you put leverage on your side, have strong anchors, and take all the play out of the machine of the rope.

With this twising torque the limb will stay more level, as it arcs around, but you need length of hinge across face to keep it from actually flipping over on small bundle of holding wood at the top of hinge(unless that is what you want). In this case not manipulating the holding wood may be preferable, the longer line of hinge across the face will take leverage against the tendency to spin.

Simple redirect pulley systems can give better pretightening, allow faster/cooler lowering (as a strategy for less loading of overhead anchors), but can put up to double the presented load on the anchor, any friction in the overhead anchor that reduces the amount of pull that it takes to hold the line, reduces the anchor load. Any helping/braking friction on the ground, does not reduce the anchor load, the line tightness between the ground friction and overhead anchor pulls on the anchor in excess of the loads own pull, pulleys make that number higher.
 
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one more reason i don't use pulleys all the time..

this morning i ran into a climber i know . he asked me if i had a pulley he could borrow. so i gave him one to use. he was in a tree the other day, and started to get dive bombed by wasps( there was a big nest in the tree). so he dropped out of the tree and left his pulley up there. now i would have been able to just pull my ropes and leave, not leave $150 worth of gear in the tree. he wouldn't tell me the address. i took his pulley down one other time for him to.
 
I use pulleis because;
they reduce wear on the rope
your not adding huge amounts of friction
you can set them anyhwere, you don't need a crotch
you can set them so that the rope is pulled away from the tree, less friction again.

Your buddy shoud have set a redirect with a second pully or biner to reduce swing, I do it all the time.

If I'm going to be using a block/pulley on a spar I can drop out latter, I will set it as a retrivable with a peice of rope through a crotch. I just make sure it will stand up to the force multipiers related to this type of applitaction.

Anyone have a link to that diagram?
 
If its that easy, why ask for help? I assumed the pictures did not accurately portray the situation. You're looking at taking large pieces with a LONG swing from a questionable TIP.

If I can save an hour of rigging or climbing by using the crane, its worth it. Plus, I get to use the crane to load logs, so no cutting and loading little chunks.

Assuming three hours climbing to get this down, I could do it in less than an hour with the crane. Same price for the job, but I saved myself two hours, and we look OH SO SWEET taking it out in 3 pieces with very little effort.
 
Hey Rich, did you ever wind up meeting with that pizza guy about stump grinders?? What ever happened to him?
 

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