[UrbanTractor]

Wow Jere that was quite a blow. Very impressive how quickly you tackled and resolved all that mess. Kudos!

 

[turboaudi80]

Wow, what a mess and what a response. Glad everyone is safe.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[mikeinri]

Wow, what a mess! Not sure that you could have convinced me to walk, let alone drive, under that...

Great job getting it all restored so quickly, especially with the weekend coming up.

Mike

 

[Jere39]

I forgot to mention the Honda Generator worked flawlessly, keeping fresh water pumping from the submersible pump in the well, and all our cold and frozen food just the way my wife likes them. Nice to have a piece of equipment that except for test runs, rolls into service once every couple years and just flat works.

 

[PA318Guy]

Makes me glad that my electric is underground, I've never had to worry about trees doing damage to my lines. That has to hurt the wallet when that happens!

 

[mikeinri]

Our electric is underground, on our lot, and all the way out to the end of our street...

...and that's where the protection ends. Everything else (back to the power stations from what I can tell) is above ground.

Mike

 

[Jere39]

Gentlemen, I wish my electric was underground too. A couple years ago I got an estimate to trench my electric and phone underground. It was not pretty. Although the occasional outages due to trees on my own property are very inconvenient - and they almost always happen in the cold of winter; I've got to admit the price of underground will not sway my plans for the foreseeable future. That said, as just a reminder to us how fragile the infrastructure is around here, the electric went out again this afternoon, almost certainly due to another day of gusty wind. This time it was somewhere in my local community, and all my neighbors shared in the chilly dark early evening. PECO did repair the outage, and I'm here typing again.

Today my son visited and assisted me with several hours of clean up. We stacked the brush, sawed the smaller stuff and moved it to a new stack. Then we started winching the bigger stuff up the hill, onto the arch and across the property to a future processing area. I walked down the hill on the trunk of this big old oak and snapped this picture up to my driveway:

 

[Steve Urquell]

This popped up on my Tacoma forum. Astoundingly stupid.

 

[TrakFan]

This popped up on my Tacoma forum. Astoundingly stupid.

If you go to youtube, there seem to be endless videos of mishaps with people cutting down trees. Either folks are deliberately filming staged (fake) accidents, or the stupidity bug is more contagious than Omicron. (I lean toward the latter).

 

[mikeinri]

That guy is incredibly lucky that he got neither squashed nor impaled by that tree. Stupid doesn't begin to describe it...

Mike

 

[mikeinri]

@Jere39 Nice job on the cleanup, and great pic.

The only reason I have underground utilities is because this development was built in 1999, which was after the town changed the zoning laws to require it.

I'd never, ever, pay to bury them. While my yard is small enough to make it a "fairly" easy DIY project with a rented backhoe, I wouldn't attempt that, as my septic system is on that side of the yard.

Plus (as we both noted above), underground utilities only help to the point that they're still underground. Then, you're at the mercy of the above-ground lines staying intact...

Mike

 

[mikeinri]

I had something smaller come down in the wind storm overnight. Was between my shed and the neighbors' and hit neither!!!

View attachment 2540176

I'll take care if it over the weekend.

Mike

...done...

Mike

 

[mopar65pa]

...done...

View attachment 2540515 View attachment 2540516

Mike

Mikey you crack me up!

🤪

 

[mopar65pa]

So my best friend, business partner and i did a little felling on Wed here at my place. He knocked down 10 out of the 15 Arbies that need to come down. Cold, rain, sleet, and snow have haulted the progression of limbing them and cutting Eastern white cedars into stakes for the greenhouse.

OH and I bought a new saw. A Husky 435 for the small stuff.

 

[PA318Guy]

Lots of small limbs down here, so no tree felling to be done! Will have to go around at some point and pick up all the limbs though.

 

[Steve Urquell]

I'm no pro but there are times I feel unsafe felling certain dead trees and I will cut and pull them down rather than risk being under them when they go. I hope this is useful to someone in my shoes.

This is a 16" cherry I mow under and those big dead limbs (big one 12" in diameter) had me worried so I knew this needed to come down. It is on a slope, leaning one way while the big limb is hanging out the opposite way

Tied it up for a cable pull. I made a cable lifter out of an old extension pole and loop a cable around the trunk with my pull cable hooked to it. Let's me pull from 16ft up the tree while setting the cable from the ground.

Tried a Humboldt notch for the first time.

Made a back cut and then started pulling it. It resisted and I cut a little more and drove some wedges in the back.

When this tree hit the ground the limbs shattered so I felt justified that I had put in the extra work to pull it. Someone better than me might have just dropped it but I didn't want to risk a dead limb falling on and killing me.

 

[mikeinri]

I've done the same, especially to ensure a tree will go the direction that I need it to (away from the house, other trees, etc.).

Mike

 

[Steve Urquell]

I've done the same, especially to ensure a tree will go the direction that I need it to (away from the house, other trees, etc.).

Mike

Me too. That was part of the reason I pulled this one too. It had too many factors(on a slope, leaning one way, huge limb the opposite of the lean, another big limb opposite of that one, hollow trunk) that made me think it could twist off or turn as I was cutting it. Also didn't want to start notching it and it start breaking as I knew nothing about the integrity of the trunk

 

[Jere39]

Another busy day - The championships tourney for the winter RB league. I busted out in the semi's. My rationalization - no one else in the league is even eligible for social security yet. In the end, I won a new racquet ($235 value).

Then home where my son was awaiting for rigging and some grunting a couple of the log sections from the wind fall (literally) oak up the steep hillside along my driveway.

Yes a bigger tractor might help.

 

[c5rulz]

Another busy day - The championships tourney for the winter RB league. I busted out in the semi's. My rationalization - no one else in the league is even eligible for social security yet. In the end, I won a new racquet ($235 value).

Then home where my son was awaiting for rigging and some grunting a couple of the log sections from the wind fall (literally) oak up the steep hillside along my driveway.

Yes a bigger tractor might help.

Gotta laugh @Jere39, You are now dealing with dirt covered cable skidded logs like I do every day.

BTW, good move on not attempting to cut the trees on the lines. I never want to see friends of mine use the words chainsaw and ladder in the same sentence.