Hello all
This question may already have been covered, but I can't find the exact answer that I'm looking for so I'm starting another thread. Apologies if I'm boring anyone!
I was recently doing a job that involved quite a lot of limb walking. It was a few Oaks that were seriously overhanging the house, the reason being that they were on the edge of a wood and south facing so most of the growth was in that direction. The customer wanted to removed some overhanging limbs to balance the trees up a bit as a large one along the same row had recently come down, (though luckily missing the house).
Without wishing to large it; I'm fairly competent at limb walking, i.e. don't have too much problem with balance and getting out on a limb by walking backwards, bracing against the lifeline and using branches as foot holds, especially since I was on a strong as Oak in this case. I also get the TIP as high and strong as possible.
My issue is what would happen if the limb I'm walking on was to break??? I worry about:-
a) swinging into the trunk and causing myself injury as the swing in would be significant
b) the broken limb dropping and causing damage (in this case to the house below)
In this kind of situation I normally look for a parallel limb above me to re-direct on and/or strop on to. If there is no such option then I strop on to the same limb on which I'm standing, to stop swing-in in case I lose my footing. In this case I worry that if the limb was to break I could potentially end up in a situation where both (A) and (B) were true, with me stuck in the middle with the weight of the broken limb trying to tear me apart!!
What does anyone else do on this kind of job?
The only half decent solution I can come up with is to have an extra long strop or the other end of the life line to a fixed point on the ground or a solid groundie. A good distance away from me out from the trunk, to control swing-in.
I'd like to know peoples thoughts on this please
It might look a less that impressive photo but it felt quite dodgy to me!
Cheers
Simon