If you own a home with trees in its yard for long enough, you’ll eventually have to confront the question of what to do about a dead tree. You’ll think about calling a tree removal service, and then you’ll second guess yourself, wondering if it’s something you could maybe just deal with yourself. But … can you? Can you tell if the tree actually needs to be removed? Do you have the skill and equipment to safely remove a dead tree? Will your homeowners’ insurance cover you if you hurt yourself or damage property belonging to yourself, your neighbors, or your community while removing the tree?
At Least Start with a Call to the Pros
First of all, you will definitely want to at least seek the advice of a professional arborist before deciding to remove a tree. You need to know if the tree is really dead and actually needs to be removed, or if there are measures you can take to save it. If the tree is truly beyond saving, though, it may need to come out. And in that case, you’ll want some professional input on the size of the job and the specialized equipment required for the removal of your specific tree.
DIY Tree Removal?
It’s not impossible that removing your dead tree could be a task you could handle on your own. For a smaller, younger tree, you may be able to attempt this on your own. But it’s never a bad idea to decide it seems like too much of a hassle and to ask the professionals to take care of it for you. Especially when you consider your time, stress, and any potential expense (equipment rental, property damage, doctor bills), you might find the quote you get from your local tree service company seems pretty reasonable for tree removal.
But if you’d like to attempt to remove the tree on your own, how would you go about attempting this removal of a dead tree in a safe and efficient manner? Here are some tips.
- Clear the base of the tree. Pull weeds, mow the grass, and remove anything in the way of accessing the trunk. You need to be able to see what you’re doing, and excessive ground cover can block your view.
- Dig a trench around it. You need to find the roots and scoop out the root ball. These roots may be much further out than you might think. For a little tree, have this trench be at least a foot away from the tree’s center. For a bigger one, go two feet out. This is two feet out as a radius, not diameter – two feet from the center of the trunk out to the edge of the circle. You can use a spade to tap in and look for the roots, so that you can dig in below that root ball.
- Slice through those extending roots to cut through them completely. An axe or a pickaxe can work well as your tool for this task. Be sure to protect your eyes – flying wood shards can be treacherous – and protect your feet with steel-toed boots.
- Move the topsoil away from the base of the tree as you go. This will make it easier for you to rock the tree back and forth and will make it easier to get under that root ball to gain leverage. Eventually you will want to tilt that tree back as the root ball dislodges from the soil.
Or Give Us a Call
DIY tree removal isn’t a task for everyone. It takes a lot of effort and comes with a fair share of risks and challenges. And for bigger trees, you really shouldn’t even attempt removing them yourself. If you’re not sure if you’re up to the task, give us a call here at Tree Images and we’ll explain what your tree removal will entail and what it would cost to have us handle it – we expect you might find that considering all of the factors involved, it’s a task you’d rather leave up to the pros.
