[ninefivezero]

So on Wednesday we get an emergency call from a client we have done tree work for in the past. It is a huge, old, big leaf maple in a rich neighborhood overlooking Lake Washington. Turns out a huge lead from the tree had broken loose and the entire 110-foot tall 150,000 pound (??) lead has begun to break out and is hanging by a cable we had installed between the two leads in the past. This whole thing was leaning towards the corner bedroom of the neighbors house.

So yesterday two guys went out to put in some extra rope support as a temporary safety measure and then today we scheduled the entire day to remove it.



Matt standing by the base of the tree, the one on the left is the one waiting to fall.



A bit of the scale of the tree, with a huge lean out towards the house on the left. The entire yard was on a steep slope and landscaped, so there was nowhere to drop brush as we took the tree down piece by piece.



The top of the failing lead, about 110 feet up.



The point of failure, right at the base.



Because there was no drop-zone on the yard, we setup a speed-line. It was nearly 250-feet long from the top of the failing tree to the anchor point, one of our trucks, at the street below. We had to climb the ceder tree to the right to set a block, and then use a brick feature on the left houses stairway to hold a redirect pulley in the air. Then we set up a 3 to 1 system to tighten and slacken the line, as well as another control line from the top of the tree that went all the way to us on the ground and back.

We had to take the entire tree out this way, you put a sling on the branch, attach it to the speed-line and cut it, making it slide downhill towards out landing zone and chipper.



Here you can see two climbers up in the tree and some of the ropes. They spent from about 8am to 4:30pm in the tree. We even sent up pizza and pops up to them by rope I'm glad I was on the ground, climbing is fun but I didn't want to spend that long in this tree



And here is how we left it for the day. Most of the weight is off it, and with the weight of it actually pulled back into where it came from a fair bit, meaning the neighbors no longer have to fear for their lives.



We will come back to it next week with Ness Crane, to pick the remaining wood. My company has a 90-foot crane, but it probably doesn't have the reach to pick something from the street over the house, and even if it did is simply not powerful enough to lift wood that big and that far out. I won't be there for the completion of the job, but thats ok, crane work can get kind of boring anyways...

All and all, an interesting but long freaking day. Literally 12 hours, clocked in at 6:30am and didn't clock out till 6:30pm, without taking a break for lunch. So that was my day, lets see what tomorrow holds!

[freeridemusik]

Your job seems pretty cool.. I am jealous. I want to cut and knock things down! Whats the tallest tree you've taken down?

[Coleman]

And I thought I had an interesting night walking in on some pharmaceutical representatives talking about a new vaginal dryness medication...

I wish I worked outside, the restaurant business sucks.

So what exactly is a speed line? Is it basically like a guideline that you use to safely get the cut portion away from falling on anything? I'm totally fascinated by how you guys move such heavy things by ropes. Is there a guy who is just there to do the math on all the pulleys/cranks/ropes?

[mistawiskas]

definately a "manly" undertaking. It sure beats a desk job, doesn't it?

[ninefivezero]

Originally Posted by freeridemusik

Whats the tallest tree you've taken down?

Personally the tallest I've done myself was probably around 100 feet tall, but height is but one of the many factors in making a difficult removal.

Most of our jobs are actually simple pruning. On Tuesday for example it was all fine pruning, I didn't even have to pickup a chainsaw all day. Quiet handsaw days are nice. Today for example I did some house clearance on some cedars, took out a tiny dogwood, raising on a large cedar, pruning and thinning a Japanese maple, a cherry tree and a magnolia.

One thing I like about the job is that every day is different, from small hand-saw pruning standing on the ground, to huge, technical jobs like the one pictured here.

I wish I worked outside

Let me tell you some days sure suck, but overall I love working outside every day. It really keeps you connected to the real world (nature) and is something truly satisfying after a hard day.

So what exactly is a speed line? Is it basically like a guideline that you use to safely get the cut portion away from falling on anything?

A speed-line is essentially just a static (non-stretching) rigging line that goes from the area in the tree you are removing branches from down to the area you want the brush to land. You put a sling on the branch with a carabiner which attaches to the speed line. Then you simply cut the branch and the weight causes it to slide down the line to the desired location. Here is a video I found of someone doing it. This particular one is not moving very fast, but it is under control which is what really matters:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcQVuUbt0Vk

The main reasons to use it, if the situation is such where one can be used, is when there is no drop zone below the tree to simply cut and throw branches to the base of the tree, or to save time sending branches straight from a tree to the brush chipper. We have speed lined big pieces of wood, and once even a 20-foot top over a house

I'm totally fascinated by how you guys move such heavy things by ropes. Is there a guy who is just there to do the math on all the pulleys/cranks/ropes?

Any 'math' is really just knowing your gear is strong enough and setup right. 1/2" rigging line has a strength of 10,000 pounds, 3/4" is up to 20,000 pounds and 7/8" can hold up to 30,000 pounds. The large arborist blocks (pulleys) are built to hold 20, 40 and even 80,000 pounds. The thing is shock loading a system puts hugely more weight on a system than the actual piece weighs. A falling 50 pound piece of wood can register up to 900-pounds of force on a system when it comes to a dead stop.

On the other end of the system where the branches are being sent to, its pretty much just a simple redirect (the pulley suspended 20 feet in the air in the 5th picture) and then 2 or 3 smaller pulleys to give us a mechanical advantage in giving the line tension or slack.

The system was actually a bit more complicated than that though, because the brush on the back side of the tree was too far from the speed-line, and had to be done separately. The way that was done was by strapping a GRCS winch system to a neighboring tree, then using another rigging line that went all the way up to a block in the failing tree. That line went to large sections of the tree which were tied on, tensioned, then cut. They would fall and swing to the other side of the tree, than with the (hand powered) winch, could be pulled back up to one of the climbers, who would then cut that piece into smaller sections to send down the speed line. This is what a GRCS looks like, it gives the user 22:1 or 44:1 advantage, and can dead lift 3,000 pounds with a hand crank:



Whew!

You said you were interested, hopefully that helped you understand it all more

[Scrubbin_Bubbles]

Holy shit is that Tom Hanks from Castaway in the first pic?

[ninefivezero]

Haha, Matt is our resident hippie

(Oh, and this job was around $4,000 for the day, and it will be a few grand more to get the big crane and remove the rest of the stick.)

[PencilWntGtU2TheMoon]

That is a really cool job but I would not be confident if you left my tree that way. Then again, I know nothing about this. Then again again, I wouldn't have paid for that. Plus I'm in the land of wind.

[Torx]

wow dude, your day pretty much blows mine out the water.

i cant imagine the insurance your company has to have in order to lift trunks over houses..
daaammn.

[ninefivezero]

Originally Posted by PencilWntGtU2TheMoon

That is a really cool job but I would not be confident if you left my tree that way. Then again, I know nothing about this. Then again again, I wouldn't have paid for that. Plus I'm in the land of wind.

The tree is only being left as a stick for a few days until the large crane can come out to remove it. With all the weight off it, it actually uprighted itself, and even so it still has the cabling holding it up that before was holding the entire tree with brush up. It ain't coming down.

And if if were yours and you didn't pay to have it taken care of, you could be talking about causing probably half a million dollars of damage to the neighbors house and landscaping, damaging your own property a lawsuit for negligence

[PencilWntGtU2TheMoon]

I had some guys cut up a tree that fell in my backyard recently. Way below the category of your profession. But too much for me.

[randomtask]

thats a huge tree

[Coleman]

Thanks fiddy, that satisfied my thirst for knowledge. My family has been in the business of growing trees for lumber for over 130 years but it is all in flat land so it's cool to see how it's done in different situations. In a few years we'll be clearing out 250 acres so maybe if we're all still around, I'll post pictures of a mass white pine genocide.

Has your company ever dropped any big pieces onto anything expensive? I imagine your insurance premium must be huge to cover any sort of accident involving a 500lb log and a Mercedes S class.

[ninefivezero]

Nothing has really happened in the year and a half I've been there. Most accidents tend to involve scraping other cars while driving our huge trucks down narrow residential streets.... One time a co-worker was dropping a doug fir around 100 feet tall, and it turned out the top 10 feet slapped across the hood of one of our own trucks, oops. I know our crane has tipped before, but not onto anything. I can't recall any stories of my company damaging houses in ways beyond a broken window or scrapped siding.