On Mon, 11 Apr 2005 09:50:46 +0100, Cuprager wrote:

Father in law has about 9 of these massive trees in his back garden.
They are a bit taller than his 2 storey house and sit at the back of the
garden... there is a lane behind his garden about a cars width wide.
There is a greenhouse in front of the trees. You know whats coming next,
dont you! He had a quote from a tree surgeon to remove these trees, the
price was about 1k. Quite a lot of cash. The question is, is it a
diy'able job to take these down? The fears that i have are in their
rough order...

Definitely diyable, I took down two of similar size to your Father in
Law's. A bow saw is perfectly adequate - I took of branches from the
bottom until I reached full ladder height then lopped the tops off.

Reasons I wouldn't do it again:

- despite securely tying the ladder, it still swayed about a lot and
scared the pants off me.

- difficult to get it to fall the direction I wanted - fortunately my
neighbour was just as keen to see them felled as I and didn;t mind it
landing in his garden (nothing would grow near the damend things
anyway!)

- there was so much rubbish left over that I had to pay someone to
take it away and it cost me nearly as much as he would have charged
for felling them anyway.

I would gladly have paid 110 quid per tree, so provided insurance
cover is up to scratch, I would have thought 1K for all 9 trees to be
well worth it.

David