On 8/1/2013 12:10 AM, Tony Hwang wrote:
gwandsh wrote:
At a remote location we have a couple of large oak trees that
partially overhang or lean towards our cabin roof. These are tall,
narrow profile scrub oaks, but are 50'+ high and have trunks about 2'
in diameter. The terrain is sloped, so essentially I am looking to
fell these trees "uphill".

I was thinking they could be safely taken down with minimal
pre-pruning by attaching a grapple at a fairly high location (20-30'
up), roping to a block on another tree, and applying a lot of pull on
the line as the trunk is cut.

I realize a pro would be the best option, but as I said, it is pretty
remote and cost is a large factor.

Wondering if anyone has taken a similar approach to removing trees
that need to fall in specific directions. Would a standard block and
tackle suffice, or are there specific tree handling versions I could
rent somewhere? Not seeing much info online.

Cheers

Hi,
I had to do that once at my cabin but our cabin sits on a flat land at
high altitude. Exactly that is what we did but I used 1 ton pick up with
winch to hold the rope tight and enough away from falling trees. We
attached heavy rope to the winch cable. After pruning, we notched the
tree where to cut, we used big chain saw little above behind the notch.


Depends on the lean, have you felled trees in the past?
I have been successful each time at putting it down where I want. None
were leaning the opposite direction.

Pruning like others have said on the side toward your structure and the
lean will give some weight to the opposite side.

You realize that cable is dangerous... and rope would have to be rated
for thousands of pounds...
The cable can actually launch toward you if things go wrong, and the
speed would make it impossible to get out of the way.
Rope would be safer... but again, the weight of the tree exceeds most
ropes...

__Only you can determine if this is doable... none of us has the vision
to recommend what you are capable of__ and how dangerous the task is.
Pics would help. With someone in the pic for scale.


--
Jeff