Massive Oak Split (Worth Watching!)

it's cut the cable and it moves quite a bit [Applause] hi the date is April 29th 2003 what we have here is a situation where an enormous live oak split and impacted the house the split is about seven to eight feet long and about three to four feet across and comprises a very very large limb that currently is being stabilized by the ridge beam of this portion of the house which was built very very well the interior is a timber frame then if it wasn't built so strong I'm sure it would have crushed it this limb is still stabilized we've taken off all the side brush over on this side already but it's stabilized with a foot on the ground as well on the other side of the tree you can see that the limb has completely split through and half of it is still on the trunk but the main portion that is split off is is barely hanging in there the second limb of very very large limb also going over the house is cabled to the limb that split and fell by three cables up in the top and it's putting an awful lot of stress on this limb is is causing it to crack on the other side of the same limb there's a crack that's opening up it's a twisting splitting crack and it is getting worse by the minute it's about seven to eight feet long right now the same limb is resting on the other Ridge of the house which is probably the only reason it hasn't fallen off completely the limb that split is resting on this particular ridge beam and it's caused some damage to the house and down low impacted the house hard enough to crack this limb in Hamm this limb is the one that is split and the entirety of this very large limb that's towering over the house is attached to the split portion of the limb that I am filming we attached a very large cable to this limb and attached it to a chain doubled around at the top portion of this but unfortunately the only thing we could tie it to is in itself another rotten limb this is hopefully if it splits off tonight that'll that'll hold it this is one of the more difficult jobs that I've ever encountered it seems the only approach I can do is a little bit here and a little bit there to try to lighten the load but in the meantime the whole thing seems to be giving away while we're working on it and it's so hazardous and there's so many cables up in the tree there must be 20 cables in this tree there's so many cables in the tree that if anything does go the likelihood of it pulling something else down is very great so working in this tree in any location is extremely hazardous we've been working with a bucket to get up to this point because I don't want to put a man up in the tree and we've been working above everything that we've been cutting on this side and we also utilize the bucket to stabilize it and hopefully stabilize it with this cable but because the bucket has a double arm system there's a lot of branches in the way here so I'm opting to I've called out to United Rentals to have them bring in a telescoping boom that I'm hoping I will be able to get up close and project clear out over it at that point it will enable me to get into a position where I can utilize a crane to attach the the cable and the the the ties to the branches that I can expect them one at a time my biggest problem is disconnecting all the cables without having this thing come crashing down so I may have to put up some temporary cables or ropes or something but the branch is so so big that is being supported that I don't believe ropes is the answer and there's really not a lot of places I can cable to there's just a an upper area that's that's pretty rotten it's just an extreme amount of weight this is truly a remarkable tree it's spread his is very very wide it has a magnificent burl growing off of it and the tree has just been cabled there must like I said there must be 20 cables throughout this tree it seems like every branch is cabled had the cables not been in this tree when this limb failed I believe that we would not have experienced as many problems as it is it's pulling down the other section of the tree and the likelihood of it falling on the house tonight is very strong there is quite a bit of evidence of internal decay that would have been very hard to identify you can see it going up to the main portion of that upper section that split off and down here in the main part of this massive limb as you can see there were three cables that were also part of this massive limb and all three of them failed there are three dangling cables up there right now there's another cable that's dangling on the ground there's cables everywhere in this tree we got going on here there's another split cable broken cable the whole inside of this limb that split off is punky it's quite obvious from the ground there is quite a bit of oozing from the bark which may be from the fight opera but it's right underneath this enormous burl as which I haven't spoke of it's a it's a beautiful growth on the side of the tree and more shine this is a little better detail of how precarious this is there's very very little holding you know and it's just sort of wedged on this little piece of bark here I don't know why this thing hasn't split off it here there's another split that happened upon the impact that leads me to believe that the tree hit the house pretty solidly it tore the swim off and it's resting on the ridge and this torn limb is on the bottom here and there's another way I'm sitting on top of that and it's straddling the house very nicely the wind is picking up now so I'm a little concerned about the tree okay now in analyzing what to do we've found this an extremely difficult one to come up with an answer but it's obvious that there's a lot of weight leaning towards the house and my main concern now is not to take off so much over on this side so as the limb just rotates into the house so we needed to get enough branches off on this side so we can get through and work from this angle over here because we need to work around the side and I also felt that it was prudent to get there there was a hole a mountain of brush out in this area and and I felt that if the wind picked up that that could aid in rocking this hole whole thing I know it's it's a judgment call I could have gone either way but I we did take off several thousand pounds of weight off of it so I at this point I think any weight reduction is is a plus but now we've got the imbalance going on so we shall see I'm very worried about that upper canopy being torn down in the night and if that happens if that bridge branch continues to break we may come out here and find this whole tree inside the house in the morning and according to the client this section of the house is not built to the same built to the same quality as this side over here this is more of a timber frame interior and this side is more standard framing so there will be a lot of damage if that happens this house is in Saratoga and it's in the very exclusive area of Saratoga and it's a wonderfully built house and it's got some very interesting character to it and this tree was quite an addition to the front of the house after the loss of this limb if that other limb doesn't fail we're going to have to do something to try to salvage what's left of the tree and that may not be may not be a viable resource or viable option this area of the upper canopy has a branch that looks like it's been cabled to and it appears that there's some swellings as a result of the of the cables or at least two cables over here and I believe there was a couple of them over there because you can see some broken cables over on that side from where it gave way just wondering if this is an area that's had an extreme amount of pulling and and twisting as a result of the cables there's not a lot of foliage in the upper canopy either it it seems that the a bit of upper canopy decline as I said before I left this very large branch as a stabilizing foot but I also left this portion up against the house it broke off and I'm leaving it pushing on the building because it seems to act as a way of additional stabilization for this whole branch to keep it from moving and as I'm standing here I just heard a crack which tells me that this is continuing to move whose it's making lots of strange little noises right now now once again I really don't know if that's gonna hold I'm afraid that this gives way in the night just the the lunge from the swinging action could exert enough pull from all the cables that are still up there to possibly pull down that other portion of the tree so we shall see I will carry on in the morning okay there we go and the markets that go and got King Freyne in here with a hundred and ten ton crane with a hundred and eighty feet of boom the problem is going to be getting in this this machine in tightness of it'll actually function as that it'll actually function we've also rented a man lift that is a telescoping unit we were having very a hard time with the boom action of the bucket truck and this one we're going to put over in the back of the house and direct it up over so we're suspended above everything right now they're just taking some of the branches off so that we can get the big crane in here okay we've got the crane in place we're going to have to use the man lift over behind the house as well as position the small buckets which we're doing right now right up next to the tree I do not want to have a man up in this street so that's why we're using all the secondary equipment there's so many cables up there setting the balance of these two cables so this limb is lifted up without rotating is it's quite a challenge we have the bloom clear up in the sky there but each of these cables has to be set so that it pulls up evenly but we were spending quite a bit of time manipulating and maneuvering these cables I think we should have used webbing for this it's a lot easier to deal with in these big heavy cables Ronis just cut the cable and it moves quite a bit [Applause] one more cable to charge [Applause] the words was so fragile it just shattered cracked in another spot it held it kept it from going through but it up up up up up faster faster faster faster faster faster again okay okay [Music] not too bad we're gonna hide right there well the job is progressing very very slowly because of all the imbalances and all the twisting that's going on up here we've taken off as much of the weight as we can and now we've got it just stabilized one spot on the ground and a couple of spots up on that ridge beam so we're thinking about taking that off but now we're considering using that as a stabilizer if we tie that off up to the crane that'll act as a freeway on this this whole women theoretically keep it from rotating too much more than it's going to so there's like every 15 minutes we we have a different idea on how this is going to happen based upon what we see which is cracked pretty bad right here I think maybe we should tie those together so when we lifted catch weird up everything that we can on this side and got it far enough away the house that I rotate that shouldn't do anymore please we have to leave because they're stabilizing one down on the ground pretty solidly I'm hoping just going to okay we got about two minutes what we're gonna do this he's got it all wrapped up looks like he's coming down keep that thing out of the way to the top line sighs this one right there broken too better swinging off some ellipse is actually gonna lift that at the same time we've got this cable slack the idea is that if it rotates it will come to the end of flat out okay Paul you're on okay here comes the test we're just gonna do a little bit of light lifting first and see what happens it's starting to come up a little bit noise he's got it up now it's left him [Applause] [Applause] twenty three twenty three thousand pounds very very worried about this because this is the third leg that's balancing it the majority of the weight is not on the end of this leg over here but I got to prevent that from swinging in when it is split this is we're leaving that because that's helping to stabilize this thing's we have so much brush over there that we have to lift off the corner of the house as we get as up lift it up off the house we're gonna go ahead and start minimizing the weight that was one of the stability hole what happened [Music] [Music] now it's totally up to him if this guy's the master that he claims to be something happened this guy is good we get something hanging up their rope good it's out of the way oh yes 23,000 pounds yes in the neighbor's yard you got it oh man [Applause] [Music] [Music] okay we're into day three and we have another very interesting dilemma this entire limb up here has a significant crack and the homeowner wants to remove it as well our problem is the tree is cabled together as we can see the cables a little better up here the tree is cabled together there's one cable right here and there's one more cable up high holding this over here but it is quite possible that these two cables are also assisting in maintaining the integrity of the rest of this mass over here we experienced a problem yesterday when we were lowering one limb with the crane and we had to cut the final cable the limb had become so dependent upon the cable for its life that as soon as we cut the cable the limb just snapped and fell apart fortunately it was held up by the crane but it did the lower portion did swing down and hit the building my worry is if we cut any cables here what's that going to do the other side of the tree is that going to cause it to slump over the tree is going to be significantly imbalanced as much as I hate to say it I think this is this tree is going to have to be cut back moderately severe all the way around it does show quite a bit of die back up in the upper canopy and a lot of that is in this limb over here but when we take off this right hand side they're only going to have half of a tree the homeowner wants to keep the tree and so my thought process is get a lot of the weight off on the right hand side but maintain the integrity of those two cables and then do the weight reduction on this side as much as we possibly can before we cut those cables and then go back and remove this other the rest of this other limb the limb is resting on the corner of the of the roof here I don't know how solid it is we'll have to check that it was resting very very solidly on it yesterday the crack has not closed up any and it's it's quite a ways up I want to inspect that and see how deep it is but I I believe that it's all the way through and the other side it doesn't look like it's gotten any worse but it but the crack goes all the way through this major major limb that's got me worried that's one of the main cables with the turnbuckle it's very old it appears to be coming apart this tree has been cabled to a point of ridiculousness I counted 28 cables in this tree and I'm sure there's more and there's numerous old cable bolts and lags and interesting connections some of them are our antique hand-forged units but over the life of this tree this this tree has become so dependent upon the cables it really is it's like a time bomb it's ready to explode something gives and everything starts to fall apart there's one of those very interesting old hand-forged units that dates this this cabling job and there's also evidence of newer installations with the j lags and see the absence of using the thimble here and it's not a very clean job so some of the work that's been done on this tree was less than professional as you can see there's cables everywhere in the limb that we took down yesterday and this is also a very very sloppy job it's been a nightmare for the crew because everywhere we cut we're finding bits of pieces of metal and we've had to go through and cut out all the cables in the in the piles as we go so they don't inadvertently get run through the chipper or getting hit by chainsaws and it happened already now here's yet another old hand forged cable and notice the absence of the thimble however look at the neatness of the job of doing this cable wrap this is very old but somebody really took pride in their workmanship in the way they assembled this wrapping now let's do get work and I'll follow through later on the sweetheart look

Channel: arboristBlairGlenn

Views: 1,036,039

Rating: 4.4989939 out of 5

Keywords: arboristblairglenn, hazardous tree, live oak, arboriculture

Id: OZeiF3strh4

Length: 31min 15sec (1875 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 02 2014

Reddit Comments

[u/csg79]

I wonder what the bill was on this job

[u/SirDonkeyPunch]

I enjoyed this video from 2003, not least because it's interesting to see how far amateur video editing has evolved over the 15 years since: this 31 minute video would likely be less than 10% of that if it was made today.

[u/_Californian]

rip live oak

[u/raymond_francis]

I honestly don't have 30 minutes to watch this at the moment - why didn't they use a crane? Access?