Eric H-L
Treehouser
We have a Maple growing over our garage. It is shaded by larger trees on all sides except the garage side. It has been sending so many branches in that direction that some of them crossed and are rubbing each other. I wanted to remove all the crossed branches but only had time for one yesterday evening. I picked the lowest one to keep it easy.
My plan was: butt tie the branch to a high natural-crotch rigging point with a portawrap locked off at the base of the tree. I wanted to use Jerry’s bender cut to ease the foliage end down to my roof gently, and then cut through the heavier end leaving it suspended from the rigging point. Then I was going descend and use a tag line to pull the branch off the roof from the ground as I lowered the butt.
It sort of went as planned with a few surprises.
One was the bender cut: The branch started splitting. I was out of the line of fire so I was not worried about getting struck by a barber chair type lever, but I was nervous that if it broke suddenly the foliage would slap my roof harder than I wanted. Through no skill of mine, it bent a little, split a little, bent some more, split some more and came down easy on the roof.
Next surprise was trying to lower the butt while I slid the tips of the roof. Somehow my angles of the butt tied natural crotch was holding the branch back from me dragging it. I ended up lowering the butt all the way to the ground first, then switched to dragging the piece off the roof. This worked Ok until the tips went over the gutter. It made an loud scraping noise, but fortunately no visible damage.
I have several more similar to remove.
Any ideas for ways to do this safer for me, safer for roof? Easier ways?
My plan was: butt tie the branch to a high natural-crotch rigging point with a portawrap locked off at the base of the tree. I wanted to use Jerry’s bender cut to ease the foliage end down to my roof gently, and then cut through the heavier end leaving it suspended from the rigging point. Then I was going descend and use a tag line to pull the branch off the roof from the ground as I lowered the butt.
It sort of went as planned with a few surprises.
One was the bender cut: The branch started splitting. I was out of the line of fire so I was not worried about getting struck by a barber chair type lever, but I was nervous that if it broke suddenly the foliage would slap my roof harder than I wanted. Through no skill of mine, it bent a little, split a little, bent some more, split some more and came down easy on the roof.
Next surprise was trying to lower the butt while I slid the tips of the roof. Somehow my angles of the butt tied natural crotch was holding the branch back from me dragging it. I ended up lowering the butt all the way to the ground first, then switched to dragging the piece off the roof. This worked Ok until the tips went over the gutter. It made an loud scraping noise, but fortunately no visible damage.
I have several more similar to remove.
Any ideas for ways to do this safer for me, safer for roof? Easier ways?
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