Inline/serial bracing opinions please

[Steve Bullman]

5 minutes ago, Andrew McEwan said:

I would be taking my resistograph up there on that kind of aerial inspection, and also some rachet straps/small winch. Both to test the areas and unions around the rods. Have often recommended and installed sythentic bracing above old rods to reduce failure risk. From the your description rods weren't the right way to go to start with, best left for short span/lower down codominant issues if they are used at all.

It is steel cable. The rods I were referring to were eye rods through the trunk for anchoring the wire 

[Andrew McEwan]

Still not a helpful original spec then, as you have to consider the risk of whiplash failure with those long static cable runs. I'd say with old high up steel cable it's even more important to consider installing upper synthetic cable, and same advice about aerial resistograph and winch testing first.

 

Also don't need to tell you of the impact of repeated reductions on the trees ability to lay down new tissue to cope with the altered loading from static bracing.

 

Minor extra point, have seen a fair few steel cable installs done with incorrect clamping, so would be dubious if they would hold under a big whiplash load anyway, worth checking for.

Edited May 31, 2019 by Andrew McEwan
typo