New to speed line use

[TreeandLand]

My groundman and I will be taking down a big silver maple later this summer and I think the best way to remove certain limbs will be with a speed line.

But, we haven't used one before....so i plan to give it a try next week on some trees that aren't over a house. I'm thinking the simplest setup would be to rig a limb to a block below me....cut it, let it dangle there. Then attach a short rope to the limb, clip it on to a micro-pulley on the speed line.....then groundman can use the porta-wrap to give it slack so it can move down the speedline.

The trouble with a silver maple however, is that the stems go up and outward like a bush, so I will have to deal with the speed line below me at an awkward angle. Advice?

 

[beastmaster]

I speed line all the time and I like to use slings and carabiners. You can move pretty fast that way. Every tree is different and offers different scenarios for hooking up your zip line. Sometimes I'll hook it way up high and use slack to get lower branches. Then have the ground guys pull it tight after the branch is hooked up and cut. You can sometimes bend the line to reach outer branches and the tension in the line will pull it in the right direction as it slides down. The easiest way is to hook your zip line on the branch or trunk your sending down with a running bowline and slide it back(or down) after each piece is cut. Using slings I sometimes hook several branches together and send down a group of them at once.
You just want to be carefull not to get the branch your zip lining tangled with any lower branches on the way down. Also get use to it first doing smaller branches. Be carefull the momentum of the falling branch doesn't hit something on the way down(house,car, chipper etc.) Some times you can send down a long branch horizontally using two slings front and back.
Its pretty easy and your only limited by your imagination . So long as it slides down and don't hit or break anything its right I say.
Lot of different ways to hook up and tighting the ground side of the zipline too. I like to find a good anchor point, leave some slack in the line and hook up a pulley on the line and have them applie tension by side pulling a rope hooked to the pulley. they can easily change direction that way also. some times the branches get going a little to fast. So the ground guy has to be ready to give her slack to slow it down some. Just practice some easy ones first to get the hang of it. Good luck. Beastmaster

 

[TreeandLand]

tie off?

Beatmaster, thanks for the insight on speed lines. I wanted to practice it today, but the job was a big one and there was no time to spare. Soon enough though. The job I really need to use it on has thick limbs that are over a roof, so getting tension on the line will be important so the piece of wood can't dip down and do any damage. I think I understand how your ground guys tension the line. Do they put a bowline in it near the ground, attach a pulley there, and then run a second line through that to an anchor point? Once they've pulled the second line tight, how do they tie it off? A porta-wrap would work, but I only have one, and it will be on the trunk of the tree for the main rigging line.

 

[beastmaster]

we often use a porta wrap to tie off on the ground. Or some times a truckers hitch. You need something you can easily adjust and tie off. I don't think a running bowline would be good on the ground side. When the zip line is running from point a to point B. A pulley can be placed on the line down low and tension applied by hooking a rope to the pulley and pulling it side ways. If you don't have much clearance, remember you can send the piece down horizontal by placeing a sling on both ends. Be careful the rope always as some play in it no matter how tight you tie it.
You can all so put a tag line on it front and back so you can control the descend. beastmaster

 

[imagineero]

some excellent advice already given there...

The devil is in the details with a speedline setup. If its done right, it's blazingly fast and simple. If done wrong, you waste so much time it would be quicker to take the whole tree down in 1" sections with a handsaw!

As mentioned already, having a fast way of tensioning is one of the critical steps. Set your speedline high up, as high as possible. Set it once only. Down below, I use a 5:1 setup with pulleys for rapid tensioning and release. If you've got limited gear then use prussiks as rope grabs, and karabiners instead of pulleys. Go for at least 3:1. For the final tie off you can have a groundie just take a couple wraps and handhold the tail rather than fussing with tie offs. As soon as the branches are down he'll be releasing anyway. Having a prussik as the rope grab on the speedline means you can very quickly adjust where it grabs without having to muck around with knots.

Having a big bunch of slings with karabiners helps a lot. I've got about 30 slings with snaplinks, and they make speedline life heavenly. I set my speedline high up then have the guys slack off the tension. Ill sling up 4 or 5 branches at a time, on their own slings, and clip each to the speedline. Then the groundie tensions the system. The way I often do it is that I choose a final branch as the 'holding' branch. I clip that biner furthest out on the rope. Then as I make each cut, each branch drops, and stays on the line because it cant get past the last branch. So I've got 3 or 4 branches cut and hanging on the line, all held in place by that last biner clipped to a sling holding the last branch. Now I buzz that one and the whole lot goes down. This is a lot more controlled than buzzing them down one by one because you don't have the random swinging. The branches are all hanging prone before they go down the line.

While groundies are unclipping, I've already moved on and clipped my next 4 or 5 targets. They get the line free, pay out slack, I clip them all in and start cutting again. This is very seamless, and infinitely faster than mucking around trying to tie knots or fussing with ropes. When I run out of slings they send some more up again.

You will be surprised at how much sag is in the rope, so do a test run first. It will probably hit the roof and you'll be surprised, so make it small. slinging both ends for low clearance works, as already suggested.

When its time to chunk down, leave that sling on the top of the spur, put another below it and you're already double end slinged to speedline that section down. Put one more sling below as the anchor to speedline your chunk down with. Hope that makes sense. It sure is fast.

Shaun

 

[ForTheArborist]

Im going to try this stuff on some hundred footers next week.

 

[g19fanatic]

@imagineero
Any chance you have a video handy or a drawn description of what you're describing? A picture is worth a thousand words and I'm having some trouble visualizing what seeming is a very efficient speed line method.

 

[imagineero]

i can take some photos but i wont be able to put them online until tuesday

Shaun

 

[Ghillie]

Treespyder has a few good animations posted somewhere.

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