Sunday, February 3, 2013

Saving a Tree




  I received a call a few years ago about a tree that had split in a North Texas wind storm.
  They really wanted to save the tree and so we looked a few things up online and made an attempt...










     


      

   The tree was barely hanging on and we feared it would finish splitting at any time. I bolted a chain around it for safety reasons to start work.

  As you can see in the first picture, when I started to pull the tree back together, I used heavy straps instead of a come-along because I feared the cables would damage the tree further.






After tightening and re-tightening over and over and gradually working the tree back together, the homeowner decided to go ahead and have me install a very heavy threaded bar and bolt it in place.


You can see the heavy bolt in the center of this picture.  I drilled a 3/4 inch hole all the way through the tree to install it, then put oversize washers and used the nuts to finish pulling the tree together.  This also helped keep the tree from twisting in the wind.   Eventually I installed two of them then trimmed the ends off.


This was the just before we worked on it, and now 3 years later, it is still healthy and growing and the bark is starting to grow around the bolt I installed.   We did not use any product on the split, and nothing was added to the damaged area to help the tree grow back together or to keep insects out.

It will forever have "pins" in it's joints!!

Happy Tree Fixin'!

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