My Dad was on our roof nearly every year clearing our trees away from the roof. I helped him from about the age of 8. It's seriously not that difficult. If there were a 2p2 zombie apocalypse OOT would be the first community to die.

lol "tree surgeon"

http://www.youtube.com/results?hl=en...+trimming+fail

I'm just going to assume you don't have eyes if you came to any of the above conclusions based upon the OP's picture

Excellent then. So as I predicted it's turned out to be not a big deal and easily resolved. Most people see common sense easily enough.

What happens if the nephew falls off the roof?

TomCollins: worse at spotting slope or spotting werewolves?

So "******." Just so we have that cleared up.

There are literally 10 tiny ass branches that need to be trimmed. 2nd picture is deceptive on how bad the branches are, the first is deceptive about the angle of the roof.

Obviously once a straight angle where you can get some reference is visible, you can tell that it's pretty steep. That being said, most of this can be done from the ground.

Tom,
I'll bet $20 (or more) that each of the following are true:
(1) It is >11 feet from grass to edge of roof
(2) My doors are >7"6 tall
(3) There are more than 20 limbs in contact with my roof

I'm also sure that a tree guy would charge at least $200, but I'd actually have to get a quote to do that so I'll just stick to the easier to verify stuff.

This branch looks to be more than an inch:

Good thing that branch is not touching the roof!

Bad thing you said "needs to be cut" and not "in contact with the roof"

OP,

Despite some advice to the contrary, you should probably trim any branches that you think may damage your house should they fall, not just the ones physically touching your shingles right at this point in time. From the looks of things, that will require more than standing on the ground with a pulley-driven pole saw.

Helpfully,

RDH

A branch can only be damaging the house if it's touching the house. Or if it gets struck by lightning and falls onto the house. You don't need to cut the big branch.


So cut down any tree that could potentially fall into the house? Guess I need to be cutting down about 50 trees!

TC,

You're saying, "A branch cannot damage OP's house unless it is touching his house, or if lightning causes it to fall." I think that a branch hanging immediately above OP's roof can cause damage to his roof, and that many factors other than lightning can cause that damage to occur.

Condescendingly,

RDH

I thought it looked steep from the start. I'm going to go out on a limb () and say that everyone else saw what I saw, not what you saw.

So why are you still posting? Get to work!

Trim it as gaudily as possible out of spite.

But even if he cut the branch, the tree could potentially damage his house! Maybe it falls over in a bad storm or gets struck be lightning! Hence, it is irrational to worry about it. Of course, it might be more practical to cut the big branch rather than have to keep trimming small branches every few years, but that's another story.




The OP even admitted the angle looked misleading. Steep is a relative term, and perhaps there are a lot of pussies in this thread, and perhaps people somehow were able to get perspective from a picture that simply doesn't show it.

Because my comment was clearly in jest and I'm not a ****** worrying about what if's.

This will sound like a joke, but I actually hired two Peruvian seventeen year-olds to take out several large dead aspen trees just last week. They said they could take out five trees (each over thirty feet) for four hundred dollars total without using ladders and they wouldn't hurt my new roof.

I told them to go for it and they each began climbing up the trees with chainsaws strapped to their necks. They looped the branches with ropes and worked their way down the tree, while older guys at the bottom chopped the wood into woodstove sized pieces.

They did such a great job that I had them take out three more for another two hundred, but the thought of that other thread on 2+2 and exploitation did go through my head. They had just come in the country and had worked cutting palm trees on a farm back in Peru. For you lawyers, yes, I worried about liability, but they laughed when I told them not to fall. The original bid for those trees was four thousand, so I couldn't really pass up the chance.

Nobody owns a tree.