Explosively Dead Removal - Rig Or Bomb Out?

[lxskllr]

I'm wondering how you guys calculate effort on removals. I realize there's a lot of ifs, ands, and buts, but what do you generally consider most expedient? The options are bomb pieces out with lots of ground cleanup, or rig out to gently lower, hopefully keeping things mostly intact.

 

[Kaveman]

Sometimes, you just gotta make a mess. Often the most expedient is to just bomb it all down and then go help the groundies clean up. If you can rig a speed line, that can make the time and effort to do all the rigging worth it.

 

[flushcut]

Rigging out the tree will be quicker to clean up. Blowing it apart will be quicker to get out of the tree but longer to clean up. If the tree is real dead and possibly not sound enough to take rigging forces blow it apart and deal with the mess. I flopped a real dead silver maple that blew into precut firewood chunks, many hours of clean up. But it was the right call.

 

[Mick!]

Depends on species, clear up specs, clear up machinery/hand-tools, amount of groundsmen etc.

 

[Nutball]

I think I used to say add 20% to the price if it is going to shatter when it hits the ground. That's easily 2-3hrs extra raking time.

 

[Tree09]

Sometimes, you just gotta make a mess. Often the most expedient is to just bomb it all down and then go help the groundies clean up. If you can rig a speed line, that can make the time and effort to do all the rigging worth it.

This. Sometimes on spreading trees over structures it's quicker to rig because you can swing large pieces, but that's only if you'll be making a ton of cuts if not. We have lots of spreading maples and similar trees, and swinging limbs can save some time over the structures, and you can even go far enough to be able to catch the tip and let it hang (small stuff only obviously), and then send it and the rest with the next cut to swing it all clear. That can shorten the radius enough to clear without doing 2 rigging setups, and removes the balance of the limb from the equation, basically letting you be lazy and not go all the way out but still be able to swing it, aka quicker because it's less effort. But for me if it can be dropped with no rigging, that's usually what I'm doing. Speedlines can really help too, quicker than catching it and can be used to simply guide stuff to a better area, and quicker and easier than the cut and toss. If there's structural problems where you don't want to rig stuff a speedline can save you there too, just use it to guide the stuff a bit rather than moving it laterally a bunch. You can use a sling tied to a branch or log on the ground as an anchor, and that way you can quickly move it around. Another good trick that i often forget about on stuff that's gonna explode you can lay tarps or visqueen out beforehand, so that way you already have most of it contained. Dragging a smaller tarp along with you also works really good for keeping the sawdust from the larger bucking cuts out of the grass so you don't have that to clean up either, that is hard to clean up and on nice yards can be a ton of time saved because the sawdust is very noticeable in grass.

 

[Kaveman]

Sawdust on grass takes two people to clean up. One with a blower, the other with a rake. Must work together, and it must be a good rake, but with the rake "exfoliating" and the blower helping to lift the chips, you can just about erase the issue.

 

[SeanKroll]

"Calculating effort on removals" is only one part of the equation.

Safety, stress, potential for accidental damage, acceptable levels of impact, responsibilty for restoration or not, time available in the schedule, etc, factor in.



For terrible trees, always bomb out or rig to a strong tree if failure due to rigging would jeopardize the climber.

Some dead/ bad trees, I don't even want someone pulling a top out/ against a lean.
Wedging can be safer.