Bad Storm Last Night ...wake up call !

[brin]

The Mrs. and I looked out the window at about 6m last night and I immediately pointed to the basement door and told her ...get in the basement and called the Dog and he beat us down the stairs. It was either a small tornado or a micro burst....but it was blowing the trees sideways and debris was hitting the windows..we have a lot of windows...bent a window frame on our screen porch...rain was horizontal and wind speeds were 80 to 100 MPH...after about 10 minutes in the basement the noise let up and I went up not knowing what I would find....We were fortunate...only 2 trees came down...debris everywhere that the Mrs.and I are cleaning up now...I have a tree man coming next week to take down 10 pine trees all around 80 ft. high that are too close to our house for me to tackle or to leave standing since another storm may send them onto our roof, hence the wake up call....lucky they did not come down last night....

I wish I could just have the tree man top the pine trees so if they fell they would fall short of the house but I did a Google search fro topping pine trees and the results would be , they would all die soon. I just hate having to pay someone else for something I could do but they are too close to the house for my comfort and I don't have the climbing gear or experience to do the climbing and so it goes.....

 

[Toyboy]

You could do what I've done in the past, and that is let him drop them and you take it from there on cutting & clean up. Renting a chipper is the best $$ spent at times like this.

 

[Robert_in_NY]

Rent a lift for a day and knock them down.

 

[Robert_in_NY]

If the trees are 80' I would look at getting a lift that would lift close to that height so you can stay further away and not worry about dropping anything on the machine. Get one with a narrow basket and you can limb the tree as you go up so when you get ready to top the tree it will fall without hitting any remaining branches. I just trimmed up a few trees around my house with a 60' lift with 8' basket. The basket was a little wide but I had it for working on my roof and didn't want the narrow basket version the yard had. If all I was doing was trimming trees the 4' basket would have been ideal. But a 60' lift didn't even start to reach the top of the trees I was trimming. But it allowed me to remove the limbs growing into the house and any limbs near the house. I also was just able to reach a couple large limbs that were hung up in the top of the neighbors tree above my drive. I was maxed out but was able to cut them into smaller chunks and drop them straight down without hitting the base of the lift.

 

[Transit]

You could do what I've done in the past, and that is let him drop them and you take it from there on cutting & clean up. Renting a chipper is the best $$ spent at times like this.

80 foot Pine trees have some value, send them off to a saw mill.:thumbsup:

 

[Thomas]

Good to read you Mrs. and pet are okay..whew.

Those type of trees do give good shade,but when the root system starts to breath time for some heavy pruning..be stay if you decide doing the job.