My 1000th Post!
The Elm(?) only took two and a half days, not 3.5 as I had allotted. Here is a photo of the leaf structure so ID should be easy now:
Day one was just to get a start on the free, dropping the easy stuff and most importantly an in-tree inspection as to it's structural integrity. This tree worried me and with good reason. The vines covered all the major junctions and when removed revieled a rotted main "Y", a division that weakened both sides of the tree. In the following video you can see the hollow fissures in the cut pieces once we got it down.
The tree was very spongy and wet, yet was brittle broke unexpectedly. Shock loading this thing was to be avoided and I tried to distribute the load in my rigging of the big drops. John Boy was masterful in roping them down with the Portawrap. In the end no damage or injuries although when I dropped my set pole it hit butt first then tipped over and hit JB in the head. All on video from my 3CCD helmet cam. Lucky he was wearing his hard hat. Then today he backed into the stump grinder wheel while it was spinning down. He felt it flipping his baggy pants and stopped short of a severe injury.
This is what the tree looked like after day one:
You can see my rigging line set between the two major leads with two 16,000 lb blocks. I tried to distribute the load between the two sections and have the load vectors pull them together to keep the rotted "Y" from splitting. It would have been a bad day if they split.
On day two we got it on the ground and hauled out the tops and limbs. Great video using three 3 chip cameras, one mounted on my helmet. Some hairy drops though. Now I know why I charged the big bucks for this one. The customer got other bids but no one could get the wood out or grind the stump. Getting this job was a walk over, I could have bid $1k more and still got the job.
Today was hauling the major trunk out and grinding the stump. It was huge but pulpy, so my Steiner whizzed through it. I sent Dave and Karl home with the loaded dump truck after lunch and JB and I stayed to grind out the stump. Today was a great day, all I did was drive the tractor. I didn't even get dirty.
[video=youtube;gpqszIlRX0M]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpqszIlRX0M&list=UUaaT_qAfDa8u2flhJ7rV6Ig&index=1&feature=plcp[/video]
You'll have to go to my website if you want to see the awesome takedown, I'll have the video up there in a day or so. It takes three times as long (or more) when you use three cameras.
~ the Aerialist .
edit: those ramps are rated at 1500 # each, note how I moved them up to the tailgate, then up to the top board (engineered composite wood), to fill the truck. The grade alone on the front yard prohibited using a stump grinder or bobcat.
yellow or red gets sketchy. That's how I know I don't have to keep spiking around the tree and sawing the pressure gauge will go down when it releases from the rest of the tree. On big logs it's easy to leave a small patch of wood somewhere especially when your tired. Then when you boom up it will come off like a rocket ship. So ya more than one guy is good for a lot of reasons.
