Windblown Turkey Oak

Steve Bullman · November 3, 2013

Had quite a few call outs last week but this was by far the most challenging. Massive amounts of tension on the limbs propped up against various parts of the house, along with the sheer size and weight of the timber, coupled with no access for a decent sized crane, made this quite a sensitive task.

We started out one afternoon and spent about 3 hours breaking down the parts of the crown we could get to, including clearing the roof. Fortunately I had a half decent anchor point which helped me get round a good portion of it.

On our return visit we put a turfor winch on the trunk and tensioned it to a reasonable sized Oak tree in a neighbouring garden and got back to work carefully cutting away at the pieces under tension, and getting as much weight off the trunk as possible before tackling the main tension point on the roof. This last branch was carried out from a mewp which we just managed to swing round the corner. From then on it was just a case of getting the trunk rested on the deck so we could leave it for another day.

So here we have it, safe on the deck with the prospect of either coming back and slicing and dicing the whole thing, or possibly getting a small crane in to lift the trunk out in meter sections(depending on the outcome of the site visit by the crane company tomorrow morning).