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Zipping And Floating: Or How To Remove A Ponderosa From Someone's Roof.

3/17/2014

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This was an interesting one. I've been blessed to have some very cool technical removal experience in my past, but this one really took the title for most complex removal I've ever attempted. I have to thank everyone who trained me for helping me arrive in a place where I could even conceive of how to get this one done safely.  I also have to thank my awesome crewman, Tim, for his cool head and open eyes.
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That, friends and colleagues, is a 26" diameter Ponderosa Pine stem through the roof of a patio outside of Evergreen, Colorado.
Hmm. Presents a bit of a conundrum, doesn't it?

There's not much of a drop-zone here.  The roof extends on all sides of the tree a minimum of 15 feet, and the tree is in the exact peak of the roof.  Lengthwise, the shortest distance from the stem is 20 feet.

I would have loved to have used a crane, but the cabin in question is on a hillside and the only remotely flat ground nearby is a septic tank and leech field. Hmm.

Bucket truck? The stem was a good 70 feet tall from the base, and the pieces of wood near the bottom weighed close to 300 lbs for a 24" section. Assuming you could get a truck close enough to work from, that's not exactly the kind of weight bucket truck manufacturers like to see lowered from their man lifts.

The solution (you all knew this was coming) was rigging. Creative, careful, adaptable rigging!

Phase one was a mobile zip line from the trunk of the tree to the ground below.  Tension was managed using a friction based lowering device by Buckingham called a port-a-wrap.  The line was held taut as the pieces fell onto slings attached to auto-locking carabiners.  As the piece rode closer to ground and clear of the roof, the line tension was released, allowing for a smooth, controlled landing.
We successfully dropped all the Ponderosa's limbs as well as a large amount of the stem onto the zip line without coming close to hitting the roof directly below.  All of our material landed about 30' away from the building, in fact, which I counted as a major win.

Phase 2 was much more complicated.  This tree was the largest in the immediate vicinity.  Everything nearby was much smaller, much shorter and much less stocky.  Nevertheless, we needed a place to put our lowering point to get the large pieces of the stem off of the tree.  In a normal situation, it would be easy enough to catch most of the wood on the stem itself by fixing the block below the cut.  In this case I wanted to be as certain as possible that the 300-pound or more pieces of green Ponderosa Pine would fall clear of the roof-line.  I didn't trust that once I got within 15' of the roof I would be able to stop the wood from smacking it.  One good tap had the very real potential to add up to repair costs that would have far exceeded my fee for performing the work.

This was one case where "close enough" was definitely not going to cut it.

So we got crafty.  I used two of the smaller adjacent trees as anchor points for a tyrolean traverse of sorts.  We set a high-line and tied an alpine butterfly knot to anchor our lowering block effectively in mid-air.  It took lots of patience, moving the block often to find the best location and adding as much tension as possible to the system -the whole time trying not to risk breaking the tops out of the anchor trees.
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I climbed an adjacent Ponderosa to set the high line
Doing the job of a crane without using a crane is clearly very risky business.  The variables we were juggling included the amount of stretch in two large diameter rigging lines -one 1/2" and one 5/8", the amount the floating block would dip under load due to the two anchor trees bending together, and the location of the block over the house changing as the ropes and trees stretched.  This is where Tim's clear head was indispensable.  Impatience during planning time could easily have led to something being missed.  Missing something would almost certainly have meant a 300 pound piece of wood in the kitchen sink.
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Selecting the right branch and figuring out the proper rope run took lengthy communication.
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Tim gets the high line in position
The floating block worked exactly as we intended it to.  We were able to get the trunk to within 8 feet of the roof line, and then used it (with applied mechanical advantage on the lowering line) to get the remaining portion of the stem felled without punching a hole in the roof.  The two day operation was an incredible success, and we proved that you don't need heavy machinery or a helicopter to deal with complicated situations like a tree growing through a roof.  What you DO need are rope and rigging skills, a very calm and efficient team, clarity and a heaping portion of patience.
This job was a real test for everyone involved, but the feeling of accomplishment at the close of day 2 was pretty incredible.  We'd gone from a 70 foot Pine in a horrible location to a stump right at the roof line.  Most importantly, there had been zero damage to the property, and both Tim and I were able to go home safely at the end of the project with nary a scratch.  These kinds of jobs can be stressful, and they involve a lot of planning and thought well in advance, but when they go well it's all worth it.  I was so happy at the end of the day to be able to tell my client the tree had come down and the house was still intact!

BIG thanks to Devin Chamberlain for the photos from Day 1, and even bigger thanks to Tim Davis for being a great rope runner and a standup guy!
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5 Reasons you should be planting trees at your home THIS SPRING

3/11/2014

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Early spring is prime planting season in the Front Range.  Trees and shrubs establish better when you put them in at the beginning of the year so they've got a full season's worth of photosynthesis to draw on when it comes to rooting and establishing themselves.  Bringing a tree out of seasonal dormancy already in its new home is a great way to help get things off on the right foot (or root, as the case may be).
But why should you be interested in planting new trees?  Everyone seems to have a warm-fuzzy feeling about their large, woody companions, but fewer people can articulate the concrete benefits their trees provide.  I'll help you out with five starters:

1. Shade!
It seems obvious, but needs to be stated, that trees provide much-needed shade in this semi-arid region.  That means your irrigation water goes further for other perennials and annuals, that your yard is inhabitable in the heat of summer, and that your cooling bills are reduced as well!  What's more, a deciduous tree provides SEASONAL shade - after the leaves have fallen, its transparent canopy allows some sunlight through so your heating bills aren't appreciably increased.
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2.  Carbon Footprint
Drive to get to the mountains?  Heat and cook with fossil fuels?  Buy products in everyday life that contribute to CO2 emissions?  Don't feel bad.  We all do.  It's next to impossible to avoid adding impact to climate change.  One incredibly easy and affordable thing you CAN do is plant a tree to offset some of your impact!  Trees use CO2 to photosynthesize, sequestering carbon as they grow, which they use to lignify (harden) tissues in their trunks and roots.  A theoretical 30 inch diameter American Elm in my front yard would sequester nearly 450 pounds of carbon in a single year's growth, and would reduce the amount of CO2 emitted due to heating and cooling by more than 100 pounds. (Numbers provided by iTree, a peer-reviewed, open-source modeling program used to estimate tree benefits)
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3. Local Air Quality
Tree leaves pull air in via tiny pores called stomata.  These pores and the tree's tissues do a great job of filtering harmful compounds and particulates from the air.  There is a measurable effect on microclimate-scale air quality from mature trees.  My theoretical Elm would remove irritant particulates under 10 microns in size as well as asthma-inducing smog component O3 (ozone), making the air in my front yard cleaner and healthier - which is a benefit I AND my community can enjoy!

4. Add a little wildness to your backyard
Wildlife are huge fans of trees.  From the squirrel nesting in the Elm cavity in the photo to the left to the Red-Tail Hawk who hunts from the top of a Cottonwood down the street, trees provide habitat, shelter, food and countless other resources to the biotic community in urban, suburban and wildland areas.  Like birds?  Plant something thick-canopied with persistent fruit like a Hawthorn and you'll never want for tiny visitors!
5.  Trees provide MEASURABLY better health outcomes
A study complied in 1984 (Ulrich) followed post-operative recovery of a group of patients with two different views out of their windows.  One group could see a "natural" view including vegetation, and the other was treated to a view of an adjacent brick wall.  The group with vegetation out their window showed statistically significant improvement in terms of nurses' assessments of their condition, amount of strong analgesics and narcotics administered and also showed a slight improvement in amount of postoperative complications.  This study has been pointed to over and over, though it's not the only one that highlights the health benefits of having trees and vegetation in our immediate surroundings. Research has also highlighted improvements in symptoms of ADD (Taylor et. al, 2001) and increases in ability to concentrate and make good decisions (Kuo, 2001 and Taylor et. al, 2002) when people are exposed to natural settings.


So given that it's the perfect time to be introducing woody plants to your landscape in Colorado, what are you waiting for?  Most nurseries are starting to get their stock for the season, so get out there and find a few healthy babies to put in the soil!


Of course, there IS a right and a wrong way to plant - so check out the resources below to make sure you're giving your babies the best shot at a long and happy life:

Plant The Right Way (Treepeople.org)

New Tree Planting (Treesaregood.org)

PLEASE don't hesitate to contact a Certified Arborist if you have questions about the right species to plant or where the best spot on your property is to place a given specimen. Arborists deal with trees at maturity, so we're uniquely equipped to predict your baby's potential and envision the ways it might conflict with the environment around it.


Thanks for reading and happy planting!
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