I STILL don't have a building permit. The County is actually requesting that I get a NEW DEED to my house before they give me a permit! Does anyone at the County know the exact wording they want on it? NOOOOOOOOOO!.
Anyways, There are two trees that I need to remove. One is a large pine tree, which blocks my solar access (and drips sap over ANYTHING under it, meaning I can't use that part of my driveway at all!)
The other is a Maple, but not a very nice one (not a good shape, doesn't make me Maple Syrup, etc.) which will be exactly in the way of the back corner of the garage.
The pine is 70' tall and 2' diameter at the base. It's also only 10' from my garage, maybe 30' from my house, and LESS than 70' from the road. In other words, almost any direction it falls is the WRONG direction.
I read through an old Time-Life book and watched lots of YouTube videos on dropping trees. This past weekend, a friend stopped over, and we brought it down. It was a little nerve-racking...
We took out a wedge of wood in the direction it should fall, then made a relief or felling cut on the back. The tree didn't move, and I did NOT want to cut into it any more. I put a wedge in the back cut, and pounded it in with a sledge-hammer. In the video, that's what the hammering sound is at the beginning.
The camera was pretty far away (a safe distance, anyways...) and wide angle - so the video is not nearly as dramatic as it was to actually be there!
Anyways, there is now a LOT more sunlight on the front of my garage, and no pine sap dripping on vehicles.
I also started trimming the Maple behind the garage. Got one big branch down so far. It's really starting to open up the light back there too. I should also get some decent firewood. Maple is a bit too fast-growing to be GREAT firewood (compared to oak or hickory or something,) but I will have a lot of it!
It's a lot of work so far, but other than the fear of actually dropping a tree on my house, it's not that tough work, just a lot of it. I have a public yard waste site right up the street from my house, so it was just a lot of hauling pine branches down there. I found somebody through Craigslist who wants to come out and turn the pine tree into lumber with his portable mill.