Hot dang it if it didn't seem like that truck would raise me a heck of a lot higher than I expected! I didn't think to hand my phone to someone to take pictures until I had the tallest limbs down, but according to the range finder, the tree topped out at 96' tall. Didn't look all that bad from the ground. Once I was dodging the power lines and the wind started blowing while I was 100' off the ground hanging out of the basket, I started getting nervous.
Anyway, I can't sleep now because I'm too sore and I still have the entire tree to get cut up into manageable pieces and get off the ground! Worse, we have a winter storm warning for about 8" of blowing and drifting snow for tonight. C'mon, surely someone wants to come down and help cut up this tree and help me haul it off....don't ya? Since one of my business ventures is selling grease, by the quarter barrel or tube, I can lube ya up really nice for the help. I gave the guy $700 worth of grease for using the bucket truck and having him get his giggles by showing me how high it would lift me.
This is the same house that I paid our own WorkingWoman to paint on the inside and fix the crack I put in a ceiling and wall when I used my 20 ton jack and oak timbers to jack the back bedroom back up from where it settled. It's also the same house she showed up and found me crawling around inside the septic tank cleaning it out and cutting all the roots out of. That tree that I took down had one heck of a food source with the septic tank about 10 yards away from. The best I can tell, nobody had ever dug it up before and removed the lids to do a thorough cleaning.
I should have gotten my phone out of the truck to take pictures of that deal. Roots had literally raised the 4" thick concrete lids (yeah, I know, they are only 2" lids now) up by almost 2" and had formed a solid mat of thousands of small roots all inter-weaved and was about a foot thick. And, the foot thick mat of roots wasn't holding a foot of mud in their grasp either! You know what they had all tied up in them!! After cutting a hole in the mat big enough to have a truck pump out all it could, I spent 2 days cutting the mat out and clearing the tank. I was shocked to find that it was a bricked tank that really wasn't in bad shape at all once I got the mats out. Heck, even the baffle was still in place and in good shape. All the black mastic tar was still visible inside the tank on the bricks. Still, I used my excavator to put in a new field bed system and did a little tuck point repairs to the top bricks to allow the lids to fit back on correctly. To make sure mud didn't seep in the old tank, I covered all the lid joints with old 3 tab shingles before using good ole back power and a spade to re-cover the tank. It all works great now but, literally, it was one shitty job!
Ah, the love and joy of being a landlord... At least the renters never complained any. They saw that I was doing all I could do, including changing out both toilets inside the home and cleaning up the mess that was made when it backed up through the basement floor drain. I mean, it wasn't their fault. I try to do the right thing. I have a family of 3 living there now whereas there was only one little old lady living there by herself for the last 26 years. I doubt she did more than 2 loads of laundry a month, took more than a couple of dumps a month and was only able to take 'spit baths' for the last few years. Oh well, I'm getting in better shape now anyway. Next I get to clean the 2nd floor gutters. They are plugged from that damn tree I just took down. It may have to wait a bit....unless our WorkingWoman wants to....oh, never mind.
Sorry for the poor picture quality. They were taken by my phone and it ended up being completely dark, and working by flashlights by the time we got the base of the tree dropped.
Anyway, I can't sleep now because I'm too sore and I still have the entire tree to get cut up into manageable pieces and get off the ground! Worse, we have a winter storm warning for about 8" of blowing and drifting snow for tonight. C'mon, surely someone wants to come down and help cut up this tree and help me haul it off....don't ya? Since one of my business ventures is selling grease, by the quarter barrel or tube, I can lube ya up really nice for the help. I gave the guy $700 worth of grease for using the bucket truck and having him get his giggles by showing me how high it would lift me.
This is the same house that I paid our own WorkingWoman to paint on the inside and fix the crack I put in a ceiling and wall when I used my 20 ton jack and oak timbers to jack the back bedroom back up from where it settled. It's also the same house she showed up and found me crawling around inside the septic tank cleaning it out and cutting all the roots out of. That tree that I took down had one heck of a food source with the septic tank about 10 yards away from. The best I can tell, nobody had ever dug it up before and removed the lids to do a thorough cleaning.
I should have gotten my phone out of the truck to take pictures of that deal. Roots had literally raised the 4" thick concrete lids (yeah, I know, they are only 2" lids now) up by almost 2" and had formed a solid mat of thousands of small roots all inter-weaved and was about a foot thick. And, the foot thick mat of roots wasn't holding a foot of mud in their grasp either! You know what they had all tied up in them!! After cutting a hole in the mat big enough to have a truck pump out all it could, I spent 2 days cutting the mat out and clearing the tank. I was shocked to find that it was a bricked tank that really wasn't in bad shape at all once I got the mats out. Heck, even the baffle was still in place and in good shape. All the black mastic tar was still visible inside the tank on the bricks. Still, I used my excavator to put in a new field bed system and did a little tuck point repairs to the top bricks to allow the lids to fit back on correctly. To make sure mud didn't seep in the old tank, I covered all the lid joints with old 3 tab shingles before using good ole back power and a spade to re-cover the tank. It all works great now but, literally, it was one shitty job!
Ah, the love and joy of being a landlord... At least the renters never complained any. They saw that I was doing all I could do, including changing out both toilets inside the home and cleaning up the mess that was made when it backed up through the basement floor drain. I mean, it wasn't their fault. I try to do the right thing. I have a family of 3 living there now whereas there was only one little old lady living there by herself for the last 26 years. I doubt she did more than 2 loads of laundry a month, took more than a couple of dumps a month and was only able to take 'spit baths' for the last few years. Oh well, I'm getting in better shape now anyway. Next I get to clean the 2nd floor gutters. They are plugged from that damn tree I just took down. It may have to wait a bit....unless our WorkingWoman wants to....oh, never mind.
Sorry for the poor picture quality. They were taken by my phone and it ended up being completely dark, and working by flashlights by the time we got the base of the tree dropped.