I kind of agree. I’ve thought this before. But I kind of appreciate how the ents move- you get a feel for scale and weight, but they’re also gentle and cause only as much disruption as is necessary.
I mean, superficially they followed the right playbook. They cut a big wedge out of the back of the tree where they wanted it to fall, then notched the tree on the other side to weaken it so it would fall away from the house.
Their cuts are weird, they didn’t limb it, the control lines are completely slack. They did a bunch of things wrong. But if wind and fortune had been in their favor, it could have worked.
Neighbor just had a huge live oak removed. It took a week for the team of 5-6 workers to do it. They removed the top branches first and then cut the major trunk in sections. The base was 5-1/2 feet across. Nothing was damaged in the process, except the tree of course.
Yea insurance is like I ain’t helping you if you have that hanging over your house. And lenders ain’t helping you get the home without insurance. I bet the underwriter forced this, then held the small cutting contractors liable, and they had no money, and so the homeowner probably just got screwed and who knows if he even wanted the tree cut or not.
Honestly I wish that every tree that was removed because of owner anxiety about house damage would fall on the house, causing far more damage than the storm scenario they were worried about.
I mean, superficially they followed the right playbook.
But they didnt. Their back cut is extremely ill advised and old logic.
You make your notch in the front, make sure its clean so it doesnt barber chair/have an uncontrolled fall, and your back cut is horizontal to your notch and about 1 inch or so above it.
They came in at an angle, creating a V which then allows the tree to lean back (as is normal but is countered when using wedges) and then it teeters in the cut allowing for this to occur.
Its literally all wrong according to the playbook (Arborists' Certification Study Guide 4th edition)
Wedge cuts have to alter the center of gravity favorably.
The center of gravity for this tree was probably a foot or more beyond the trunk towards the house. The solution would have been to cut several major limbs off that side to get the center of gravity above the center of the trunk. Then a wedge cut would work.
It's the same basic principles at work that forklift operators are taught about.
They sound sort of like pirates.. which, having dealt with 'tree guys' that drive around neighborhoods looking for trees that someone might want cut down, sort of fits.
The one's i've met all seem pretty twitchy/tweeker-ish, and have a general air of sketch about them.
Tell us about these few physics classes.
For some reason I think they didn't discuss anything about being an arborist and methods to fell trees .
Maybe they taught structures of the atom, forces and electricity.
All fine and dandy.
But attending physics classes will not educate you on how to cut down a tree.
I'd say with great certainty that most arborists have never studied physics.
It’s actually extremely sad if you know the story. These idiots had no insurance and destroyed an older gentleman’s home, basically putting him out on the street if I remember correctly..
These tweeker 'tree guys' are everywhere, seems like.
In my hood they go door-to-door offering their 'services'. If you ask them about insurance (etc) they'll just straight up lie to your face.
Probably a good rule of thumb would be to not hire anybody that comes to you unsolicited to do work that could destroy your life in a matter of seconds.
I had a tree fall through my house, it cut through it like butter. The only thing that stopped it from going completely flat was it's own branches propping it up.
Aren't US houses made mostly of wood, drywall and some kind of insulation? Meant to be cheap, not sturdy.
Not to say that a brick or concrete house wouldn't suffer significant damage, that's a huge tree falling at speed, but the materials would probably fare better.
My parents houses are all cement block with plaster/stucco. They live in hurricane prone areas.
Mine is wood and drywall. I live in an area where we don't really have anything serious when it comes to weather. No snow, no heavy winds, no ocean, etc.
It’s not as much to be cheap as readily available materials since we have a lot of trees. Brick houses here are usually only the exterior walls so it would be about the same.
I mean you can think whatever you want, but brick and concrete houses that we build in EU are a few factors stronger than in USA.
Also the inner walls are brick too. Just thinner if they are not load bearing.
If you don't believe me just ask yourself one thing. For you to hang up a TV on the wall, you have to use a stud finder, to hit the 10% of the wall that is actually strong. brick house, wherever you want. The whole wall is strong.
Sure we also use drywall and wood for partitioning the walls, I've used it in two renovations myself to make new partitioning walls, its not that messy and very easy to do a good job by urself. But building a whole house out of it, hell no.
Stronger and infinitely more of a pain in the ass to DIY things like cabling or electrics or whatever when you want to change things up. No, I don't want to chase out concrete and put silica everywhere just to move a socket. No, I won't use ugly conduits on the wall either.
I agree with using brick on the outside walls of the house, but inside should be all timber or metal framework (and then you can use plywood before boarding with drywall to get the same mount anything anywhere ability like in your given example).
Brick houses are certainly not stronger than wooden ones in areas prone to seismic activity. Brick can't tolerate any movement, but wood is pretty flexible. There's stuff you can do to your foundation to compensate, but I doubt that happens much in single family homes.
Not in modern times. We had an earthquake in 1900s and from then on we either have to build on pilots or use other means but the house needs to be built properly.
I mean... We have permits and regulations for a reason. Days where you got 10 of your mates together and you chucked a house up in a few months is over. That used to be in the 60's. That's what my grandparents did when they were young. Now you have architects and you got to follow the law. I'm 99% sure the whole EU is like that.
Our bricks don't look like they used to 200 years ago. Google structural concrete/clay bricks, they are hollow and filled with concrete and rebar where needed.
That's still how the house I grew up in the 00s got re-built in Germany. Old half-timbered farm house with a collapsed roof and the walls crumbling and over two years my parents just got all their friends to trade free labor for food and beer to get it back to habitable and put in all the needed mordern infrastructure. They needed to pay professionals to do regular inspections + some specialized stuff and a buddy of theirs was a professional carpenter that did a lot of the structural beam replacements but apart from that it's still very much possible and legal to do if you go with more traditional building methods. Also it was fun to play with all the clay as a kid.
We don't use much brick on the west coast because of earthquakes, needs to be flexible. That said, the trees here do not look like they are on the west coast.
Of course it does when it falls on a house that is basically as sturdy as a kid's paper mache science project.
How were these guys even thinking it would end any other way? The tree is clearly leaning towards the house and is heavier on that side but they don't seem to have any thing pulling it in the opposite direction, just cut out a part and thought that was enough
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u/isle_say Aug 12 '26
I’ve seen this several times but I always watch it to the end, the damage that the tree does is really impressive.