large dead tree removal

Recently bought a farm that has a large dead oak standing on it - about 3 or 4' diameter trunk. Been dead for many years, but the large branches are just starting to fall.
So it's dangerous to be under. Anybody have any ideas on how to safely get it down, besides hiring it out? Open pasture around it, so access not a problem.

Big drill bit and a couple sticks of 40% dinamite about 2/3 foot from ground, Looong fuse. Sister and older brother used to use that and some plastic explosive bags when clearing trees, stumps and big rocks in quarry. A hole in ground next to trunk and 25% sticks will drop tree more than shatter trunk. Paperwork for explosives a bit tighter now, might have ATF observers. RN

If it is hollow inside, you may be able to burn it down.
John

Most generally, a person would have to look at the problem to give the best advise, can you post a picture ?

I 2nd the bonfire idea..

got any old lumber / pallates that need to be burned?

stack them up.. save some newspapers for a couple weeks.. get some lamp oil and kindling, and start early.. invite some friends over.. bring the grill out, and some weiners and slaw and cold drinks... make a safe perimeter around the tree 2x wider than it is tall and let the sucker burn. It -will- come down eventually!

make sure there is noting it can fall on.. and perhaps cut a fire break around it / have hoses / tractor ready in case embers fly off.. etc..

soundguy

One would have to see what it looks like, a photo would be helpful here.

Seems people have their own varying preferences on these, hire out a bucket truck, take it from the top down etc., well take off the widowmakers at least, then you could cut it with a typical face cut/back cut. You might want to plunge cut into it and see if and where it's decayed, will help you figure out where to cut it and make it fall the way you want, hopefully no metal like hedgerow trees that used to be fence lines, most times I can figure out where the 3 strands were, and cut around them, other times you find something grown in, something someone hung on the tree and forgot, my friend hit a nice piece of steel in an old elm at my place last year.

As is, I stay right the heck away from em, those darned spears/widowmakers you have to contend with just take precedence, cutting the rest is not so bad from my experiences. Some species like the elm we have here will hold onto those limbs, they tend to stay put, most times just the outside is weathered, inside hard, but also can be brittle, just the trunk gets punked out, even at that, every tree is unpredictable, always a level of risk to mitigate.

You could also dig the base out, weaken it, preferably with a machine that has a solid R.O.P.S. canopy that a limb can't penetrate, even vibration from a crawler can cause a weak one to fall. Once you dig out the base, severing the roots, can push or pull over easier.

Safest thing to do is to get those limbs down, bucket truck, articulated boom manlift like a JLG from a rental house to get up their. Other than that, ratchet strap your ladder to the trunk, climb up and set a choker on it, up high for leverage, use enough line to get out of it's path and pull it over with a heavy crawler or tractor, might come over, snap off or just stay put, these are never easy and sometimes you just have to spend the money, if it's a hazard now, money well spent, otherwise let the critters enjoy it, I've got 2 big elms like that, decided to let em be until I could do it safely, getting under it and taking a chance to cut them down, too risky as I see it.


Don't make me an expert, one kind of work I have a lot of respect for is tree cutting, take your darned time and think it out, no rush, I did a ton of tree cutting this spring, started off with this hedgerow, took about a dozen using a choker up high, advantage was the lack of widowmaker type limbs, though black cherry seems to hold their limbs when dead, it's that hollowed out one you don't see, took a 120'+ oak, looked healthy and no defects, well the ants were up top, hollowed it out, you just never know.

I cut some and pulled on them to influence them to fall away from the neighbors back yards, some I just pulled right over after feeling em out with a few tugs, but you can't be too careful with your rigging, have to know when it just won't pull, and you could snap a line, chain, cable etc. time to try something else. That is 3/4" heavy @ss chain, I needed the length, but the rest was good quality 1/2" and 3/8" with a 1/2" wire rope choker/clevis and you can see my ladder strapped off, just to connect the choker, don't use a metal ladder near power lines for any reason.

Just working around that tree is dangerous. Falling branches can be be deadly. Can you spare the area for enough time for the tree to fall from rotting. Build a fence about 50' away circling the tree? If it has an obvious lean so as to predict the fall path, a bucket truck could be used from the opposite side to attach chain or heavy cable to pull the tree over in the natural direction of fall. Crawler loader with good ROPS could help push it over if the pulling does not work. But a person on the ground near that tree is in danger.

I have dropped a lot of trees over the years but not as big (or dangerous) as that.

Here are the options----take your chances with cutting out a wedge in the trunk and letting it drop. or get a guy with a bucket truck and a chainsaw to drive up and saw off several limbs and then drop the main part. Or the most expensive is to hire a tree removal crew to cut it up.

If you know someone with an excavator have come over. He'll either push it over or break off the branches and then pull or roll it out.
Watch a guy do that to a black locust here by me. He knock off the branches then just reached up and pushed it over. It was living so the root system was intact. Oh yeah it was about 3 foot through at the base. Great firewood.

Hey Billy,
Where are you buying your log chains? I don't think I've ever seen one that long!

I just had this problem at my brother's house. We rented a pull behind lift, 42 footer, and cut the tree in pieces working our way down. We did this with a couple of them. Worked great and safe as can be, as long as you're not afraid of heights. I think it cost $250 for the day- a lot cheaper than hiring somebody.

If it's hollow at the bottom and somewhere up top and if you get a good fire going inside and get a good draft, it makes for a pretty cool show at night. Like a blow torch out the top.

I was going to suggest hiring your local lumberjack to drop it for you, but since you are by Houston, there probably not too many of them around. If it was me, I'd have no problem dropping it myself. It would be nice to have at least a 24 inch bar, 30 or 36 would be even better. Notch it about 1/3 of the way thru, start sawing from the opposite side, as soon as you are deep enough pound wedges in the saw cut. Continue sawing until you come about 2 or 3 inches from the notch.. pound the wedges... saw and pound some more until it goes over...keeping the wedges pounded tight, it'll soon give way, and drop where you wanted it. Be very careful that your hinge doesn't get too small. I've dropped many trees, and haven't found one yet that didn't ultimately come down. For a tree that size, make sure you have plenty of wedges before you start sawing.

Please!!!! Do not tell anybody to push over a tree being cut with a dozer!! It can break off the hinge and fall over the machine. It has been known to happen MANY times. I have been asked to push them over but always refused because of the danger issue.

Before you go to much further take your chainsaw and make a plunge cut into the trunk to see how rotten it is inside.If you start to cut it and it's bad inside you will have no idea what it will do when trying to fall it.Someone could get hurt really bad or killed.

Just my thoughts

Vito

If there's no danger of it damaging something when it falls, the best course of action might be to just wait until it falls on its own. Big dead trees are very unpredictable as to where they will fall.

I've cut down a number of oaks, but none over about 30 inches in diameter. The red oaks in particular tend to be hollow, and there are few things more dangerous to cut down than a hollow tree. I prefer to run a line through a snatch block chained to a nearby tree or stump. That way I can use my tractor to put pressure on the tree and hopefully get it to fall where I want it to go.

If you have no experience felling smaller trees, you'd better leave this one alone.

That one was a left over from a friend's dad who used to be in the towing business with 3 single axle wreckers, he gave that one and a few others to me a long time after he was out of that business.

Overkill, and kind of heavy to lug around, but gave me more than enough safe distance from these dead/slowly dying black cherry trees. I actually did not need that much tension on these to get em to fall where I wanted, heavy rope would have done it, a few I cut with some tension applied but it was nice knowing it was strong rigging, tractor on a down hill slope, loaded tires, counter weight on, loader etc., sure straightened those leaners back up and pulled one over stump and all, never slipped a tire.

I would not advocate the use of a track type or other tractor to directly push on any trees, unless the falling object hazard was eliminated, or you were adequately protected with a stout R.O.P.S. This is not for the inexperienced, and for those who are, no need to say it but one really needs to make a good judgment call, if it's too risky, best to leave it alone like you say.

The key is to never put yourself in danger, either have that R.O.P.S., get it topped off 1st or get a line attached where it makes sense and enough distance to be out of it's way. Or just leave it be.

I've been assigned to take out some large trees when I was a full time equipment operator, no tree-cutter was afforded to us, so for the large ones, some big mature red oak, maple I remember on this custom home site in Red Bank, NJ, I excavated one side with a 955, had an excavator brace the trunk and observe, then we would push them over, darned 955 just had a weather cab, no R.O.P.S., I don't recommend this method, can be done but is dangerous. Loader gave a high push point, so did the excavator, soils were sandy, so trees seemed easy to topple on those sandy sites.

The 120'+ oak I recently cut, was pretty darned big, I saved it for milling, still turned out to have ants up top, the guy dumping clean fill in the ravine the tree was in, thought he could take it with a JD 450H, bark was all scarred up, no one else, landowners son, guy bringing in clean fill wanted to cut this one, had another trunk weighing back the main trunk, in a ravine, no place to run sideways etc. He certainly put some marks in it with the dozer, I took my time, cut it and it dropped where I wanted it, though this tree did make be a little nervous and cautious with good reason. I think I read the lean just right, but had no idea of the ants and hollow areas. Guy who owns the dozer should have never attempted to push it over, had to be cut. I have some photos of this one. I towed it out to the short slope up to the staging area, stopped the 450H, backed up and hooked a limb with the corner of the blade, this thing has some strong hydraulics, it lifted the log and I was able to get it up the short slope, still can't believe how powerful that '02 450H was, though I would not make a habit of doing this with a 6 way blade, sure did the job.

What type oak is it, have seen POST OAK stand for years even after all the limbs fall off...




MAY GOD BLESS THE USA

As on 'Axemen' on a giant rotted tree they cut a v notch on one side and a large square notch on the other. They put Bottle Jacks in the square side and jacked them snug then proceded to cut out the midddle.Jacking the bottle jacks as they cut. They worked this way little by little until the tree fell the way the bottle jacks were pushing.

Been there. The best solution that I've found is to procrastinate about it for a year or two. Then a windstorm takes the widow-makers off. Problem solved.

Pushing on a big dead tree will make the widow makers come down. Sawing is the best way to take it down, with a helper to watch the limbs for movement. I would not get under the tree after a rain that is when the limbs come down. WaltMo

Dan,

I had a similar problem. A large elm tree died between my house and garage. I was able to borrow a bucket truck and took most of the large limbs down in pieces. However, it began to storm before I got finished and one large limb was left. The storm cracked the limb and I was afraid it might fall on one of our vehicles or on us going to and from the house. I could not get the bucket truck again due to it being used fixing the storm damage and I could not get anyone to come cut it down. So I decided to put one of my tractors to use and ...
http://i219.photobucket.com/albums/cc219/chooch_in/Misc/tractor_tree.jpg

The bad news is the rest of the tree is still standing today.

Let me try that picture again.

Also agree. Start sawing on any part of one that big dead that long, the vibration from the saw alone will make branches fall when and where you don't want them.

If it is hollow, drilling a hole and packing with enough gunpowder or maybe look up the fertilizer/diesel mix on the net would bring it down. But plain old burning would be my first attempt, cheapest and easiest if it works. DOUG

There is no way short of a 155mm Howitzer that is 100% safe. If you have no experience with that size of tree, I think you should try the burning trick. Have never seen it done but looks like the safest route, as long as you follow burn permit rules.