Friend/neighbor cut down ALL trees in her yard

[Nords]

If a tree falls on a house, you've got homeowners insurance. Except for untended trees, its also pretty unlikely that ones just gonna up and fall or drop a major branch with no warning.

You make it sound so simple-- "Hello, insurance company? Could you take care of this tree that just punctured my roof? Well, yeah, the part that's not affected by our deductibles and your exclusions..."

The first thing I'd do if I needed to make a claim would be to hire my own personal adjuster. How much better it'd be to avoid the need to deal with the insurance company in the first place.

This is one of my pet hates. I can't understand the So. California obsession of trimming their trims within a inch of their life every year.

I agree that it's a problem to move into a forest primeval and attempt to turn it into a soccer field. They were there first.

But I object to those who plant without planning. Speaking as a homeowner who took over from a landscaping idiot and who's lived in three different locations over the last 20 years, homeowners plant too much of the wrong kind of plant and put it too close to the house. While Grandpa may have put that tree in your yard, he probably didn't intend for it to take over the entire lot and send its roots through your foundation and your plumbing. He just thought it looked nice and would give the kids a great place to hang a swing. Three generations later it turns into a monster that's eating everything in its way.

We rented a home that had two silver maples planted by the house. One was six feet from the diningroom and was able to attack it from both the foundation and the roof. The other was 10 feet from the front door, too far for the roof, but it did a number on the sprinkler piping. Both put all their roots on the yard's surface and ruined the sidewalk as well as the lawn. (We haven't even gotten to the raking part yet.) We took them both down in favor of podocarpis & shrubbery.

A couple decades ago the city planted pink tecomas in Oahu's Waipio Gentry neighborhood. For those of you who don't know the tree, the roots will push through schools and it drops a humongous shower of brightly-colored, sappy blossoms that attract bugs (and eat through car finishes). They were planted in the two-foot strip of grass between the road and the sidewalk. The one outside our bedroom window attracted a nightly flock of over 100 birds that turned it into a shower of bird droppings. When it started lifting the sidewalk blocks we went after the city (pedestrian liability) and their "repair" dumped concrete & excavations into our front yard for six weeks while they cut back the roots, installed a "bio barrier", and poured a new sidewalk/curb. Two years later the tree broke loose and started over.

It took me two more years of persistent nagging to get that tree cut down. The city insisted on planting a new tree which, of course, I neglected to water until it died too. Then we went ahead with the ground cover & shrubbery.

I'm pruning two mango, two tangerines, a macadamia, a mock orange (WTF?!?), a lychee, a banana patch, a star fruit tree, a couple guava, 100 feet of 10-foot tall bougainvillea hedge, and a dozen palm trees (with big seed bundles). Most of the fruit is yummy but when the green waste truck pulls up every two weeks we give it the contents of 4-8 65-gallon cans. I'm only 46 years old but the juvenile novelty of scampering up into trees to play with sharp objects is beginning to wear a little thin and I'm not gonna do this when I'm 60. Each one of these mango has one more good prune in it before I make a huge donation to UH's woodworking school. The rest of the yard is going xeriscaping so that we don't have to water and so that everything won't grow so much.

 

[Goonie]

When I was in grade school, we had to cut down 4 BIG trees around our house. Two were elms that had succumbed to Dutch Elm Disease...both about 60 to 70 feet tall. And two were box elders (about the same size as the elms) that were starting to die, and kept losing big branches during just about every thunderstorm.

In there place we have a squirrel planted oak tree that my Mom kept trying to kill for years, because it was in her flower bed. Finally she gave up, and now it's about 45-50 feet tall....a very nice, straight, solid shade tree. My Dad planted a sycamore tree out in front of our house a few months after the box elders came down. It never was a nice tree...it was VERY scraggly looking all the time. We finally chain sawed it when it was about 6 inches in diameter. A sucker started growing from it's stump...and we kept cutting it out....it kept coming back. Finally we just let it go.....it's now 45-50 feet tall also. And it's much nicer than the one he paid to have planted!

We also had to cut down two silver maples in the last 10 years....one was partially hollow and was a threat to our garage. the other was just old and starting to die...rapidly.....and it was also threating the other end of our garage.

I'm going to be planting a few trees this year to replace one of the maples (though it won't be a maple), and we want a couple of others here and there.

As for raking leaves......I don't! I mulch most of them up with our mulching mower.....and the rest I mulch and collect with my riding mower, and they get thrown on the compost pile!

Nothin' finer than to sit under a nice shade tree on a summer day sippin' a cold beverage!

 

[W2R]

I thought of this thread last weekend, when my neighbor cut down the tree in her front yard. She pointed it out to me, and told me she had been worried about hurricane season coming up, and didn't want the tree to be blown down and damage either of our houses or cars.

Things are different in New Orleans since Katrina. To tell you the truth, I thought that was very thoughtful of my neighbor to have her tree removed, even though it was just a small tree, since it has grown quite a bit this year. It was the only tree left in the (previously heavily wooded, shady) front yards of my street. Actually, Hurricane Cindy (June 2005) took out about 1/3 of them, and Hurricane Katrina (August 2005) took out the rest. The changes in "urban forestation" after Katrina made it difficult to find where I live in late 2005.At first, fallen trees blocked all entries to the neighborhood making streets impassable. After the trees were removed from streets and yards, it just didn't look like my block with all those "naked" front yards with huge craters where the rootballs had been.

One of the large trees in my back yard was blown way over at an angle by Katrina and leaned dangerously over my roof at worse than a 45 degree angle, touching it, so I had that tree removed a year ago. It never occurred to me to wonder what the neighbors thought.

You get an entirely new perspective when you see what fallen trees can do. I would never prefer a home on a heavily wooded street again. If I want to see trees, I can go to a park. My home is my refuge. It is where I LIVE. I can sit in the shade of a lovely tree somewhere else, where it doesn't threaten me and my house. I love looking at animals at the zoo, but I don't feel the need to have a white tiger in my back yard either.

I haven't cut down the remaining absolutely huge red swamp maple in my back yard, and won't unless/until it is blown over, but frankly I'd prefer a yard without any trees and I have no problem with my neighbor's decision to cut hers down.

 

[haha]

I like trees too. But this past winter in the northwest falling trees killed more than the usual number of unlucky earthlings, and wrecked a lot of houses. I cut through a little wooded area enroute from my building to a grocery store. On a short cul-de-sac that abuts this woods 4 houses were made uninhabitable by falling trees, and they still are not fully repaired almost 6 months later. Here it is usually Douglas Firs that do us in. They are very tall, very heavy, and come down easily especially if the ground is wet.

A tree came through the roof of my wife’s neighbor in her apt building about 10 feet from wife's living room. Luckily no one was hurt.

Still, treeless residential areas are usually very unappealing.

ha

 

[Martha]

My BIL's family has a beautiful yard filled with huge white pines. A tornado went through a few years ago and took down a large number of the big old pines. None fell on his house. His insurance did not cover the removal of the downed trees unless they fell on his house or vehicles. One of his cars was crushed and the insurance did cover that. He ended up spending a lot of money out of pocket removing downed trees.

I think trees are beautiful and as Ha says, a neighborhood without trees is not very appealing. I'll take the risk.

 

[FinanceDude]

Well, it is THEIR land...............

As much as it upset you, they still have the right to cut them down, unless I missed it and we are now part of the People's Republic of China or North Korea................