Tree care/removal

The subject of tree care/removal has come up in the past but it bears repeating. This is an item that you will pay for in one form or another. Either you deal with trees before they become a problem or deal with the insurance company after something bad happens.

Let me give you a real life example from my community.

I recently added onto an existing pad to bring it up to code and ready to accept a new home. The only problem now is that I must remove some very dangerous trees while the pad is empty. In a space that should have had maybe 3 or 4 trees max. I must now remove about 2 dozen. When trees are planted too closely together, they tend to get tall and skinny. This makes them weak and prone to breakage. Add in the fact that what is there now could be considered “40 year trees” (trees that have a short life expectancy) and they are approaching that time. The prevailing winds are such that these trees break and fall on the homes.

The reason this problem occurred is that someone planted screening/windbreak trees that grow to 25 to 30 feet wide but they were planted on 8 to 10 foot centers. People do this all the time in order to get a place landscaped quickly. Bad idea.

Luckily, I have been doing tree work since I was in high school and am able to cut these down myself. Some of them are big enough to be cut into lumber and it’s quite a rush to drop them. If I had to pay for this work, it would have cost many, many thousands of dollars. I got bids on having a single monster cherry tree just put on the ground and the cheapest bid was $1,000!!! Not!

The moral of the story is to have a certified arborist inspect a park as part of the DD process if you are at all concerned about the existing trees. This could be a fantastic negotiating tool as most sellers would never expect it.

Rolf

Wheat Hill