How Do You Deal With Vines?

lxskllr

Treehouser
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Jul 21, 2019
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BeerGeek's post made me think of a question I've been meaning to ask for awhile. Suppose there's a tree you want to fall, but it's choked with vines in the canopy. You could cut through the bottom, and it would just hang there. How do you get it down without damaging the tree you're falling, or the trees it's tied to?

A job I've been on has a couple nice locusts that would make good fence posts, but they're full of vines. The only way I see to do it cleanly, is climb the trees, and cut everything free first. Is that how you all handle it, or is there some other way?
 
It depends on the vines. On poison ivy trees, I'll usually cut it away as I ascend the tree (customer is informed in estimate for extra charge due to that mess). Ones like today, I had to cut various pieces of vine to ascend, then used the tree weight/pulling power to rip them out. They're always a pain, but customers are made aware they represent extra work/$.
 
I worked a job where we had to remove a good size waterfall of vines coming off one part of a tree. I think just trim them off canopy high, not completely remove. The climber went up, then sent him up the power pruned so he could reach way out and chop it all down.
 
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  • #5
That's kind of a weird job Nutball. Were they cut at the base to die unobtrusively, or did they want to keep the vines?(!)
 
Single stem. Climb or wraptor up outside the vines. Cut in, cut dead limbs, cut smaller easily managed the runs above you. Cut bottom of vines and tie rope on it. Mini skid pulls. You can skip to 6:32 to see it.

On spreading crowns, almost the same process in smaller bites and more climbing.
 
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  • #7
What a mess. It always somewhat amazes me how big a pile of vines can get when you pull them out of a tree. I'll cut one off low, and give the climber a little tug. It feels like it's kinda free, so I start pulling, and end up with a pile of vines past my knees. I think "FFS, where did all that come from?!"
 
At the job I mentioned, there was a tree line separating apartments from a neighborhood. There was a fence on the neighborhood side, and a long clump of vines dangling down over the fence from the trees. I'm not the one who bid the job, but I would have given my I don't want the job price for complete removal. It was next door to a small storm damage removal in the same tree line, so it was a quick extra trim.
 
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