Crane Removal

A view of the house without trees (note deck and Matt standing on deck! The trees would have been near/at the deck.).


A view of Burlington, Vermont from 140 feet!


A picture of me 140 up above Burlington. Bruce the crane operator dragged Beth and me up after the work was finished.

Wednesday, November 5, 2008 was crane removal day. Two pine trees were right next to a house in Burlington. One of the trees actually grew through a specially made hole in the deck. Since it would have taken Heritage 2 days to remove the trees, we subcontracted DJ's, a local tree company that does a lot of crane work.

Doing a crane removal follows several steps, some of which you can see in the pictures:
1) The crane sets itself up, extends the boom, and lowers the "pick" (i think this is what it is called; it is the 180 pound ball that holds the cable) to the ground.
2) Matt, the climber and cutter, puts his climbing rope through the pick and is lifted up to near the top of the tree. He carries with him any number of slings that he thinks necessary to attach to the tree.



3) Matt places the sling(s) around trunk/limbs, and attaches the slings onto the pick.
4) Matt is lowered down to a suitable point on the tree where he cuts the tree. He has to understand pretty well where to cut, since he doesn't want the tree to flip over.
5) Matt makes the cut, slowly and evenly, through the trunk. The sawing actually takes quite a bit of time, since he does not want to pinch his saw, and he wants to make sure the piece won't move suddenly.



6) When the cutting is done and the tree is free, Matt 'zips' off of the tree with his rope. When he hits the ground, he immediately pulls his rope out, and gets out of the way.
7) Bruce, the crane operator, then moves the 4,000 pound piece of tree onto the driveway, where we are standing by to limb it. As we limb the tree, we pull the butt end toward the chipper, ensuring that the tree will at some point lay flat on the ground. In one picture you can see me doing this with a big 440 Stihl (super heavy, when you have to lift is over your head!).





8) When all the limbs have been removed, the log is laid on the ground and pushed aside. A guy with a log loader comes by and picks up the logs.
TOTAL TIME for 2 75 foot+ pine trees, from start to finish: 2 hours. TWO HOURS! Like I said above, it would have take Heritage 2 DAYS to do this work. Bravo to DJ's and Matt (My only advice to Matt: wear a hard hat and ear and eye protection, dude!).