Tree trimming here means two things: lifting the low limbs so there is room to walk and drive underneath, and pulling growth back off the roof, the gutters, the driveway and the walkways. Both are much easier to deal with before storm season than during it.
The service on the list is tree trimming. Where that work stops has still to be confirmed, so this page states no size limit in either direction. Tell us the tree when you call and we will tell you whether it is work we take on.
What the page can tell you now is what the work itself is. Trimming is the shaping and clearance work on a tree you already have: taking the lowest limbs off so there is headroom under the canopy, cutting growth back where it has reached the building or the paving, and taking out dead and broken wood that is going to come down anyway.
It is not the same conversation as taking a tree out, and it is not the same conversation as heavy work high in a mature canopy. Those depend on the tree, and they are worth asking about directly.
So tell us the tree when you call. Where it is, roughly how tall, whether it is over the house, and what is bothering you about it. That is enough for us to tell you whether it is our work.
Lifting is taking the lowest branches off so the bottom of the canopy sits higher than it did. Nothing about the top of the tree changes. What changes is how much room there is underneath it.
A live oak or a laurel oak left alone will hold branches out sideways at head height, and on a small lot those are the branches that end up over the driveway, across the walk to the front door, or in the way of the mower. Lifting takes those off at the trunk or at a main limb, so the tree keeps its shape and you get the ground back.
Clearance is worth thinking of as a height rather than as a feeling that the tree is in the way. General practice is to keep a walkway clear to roughly eight feet, which is above the height of anybody using it, and to keep a driveway clear to something nearer fourteen feet, because a pickup, a van, a boat on a trailer or a delivery truck all need more room than a car does. A limb that a sedan passes under all year is the one that takes the corner off a moving truck.
Lifting is done in stages over more than one year on a young tree. There is a limit to how much live foliage a tree can lose at once and still feed itself, and the general rule is to keep it to about a quarter of the live crown in a single year. A tree stripped bare up the trunk in one go loses more leaf than it can spare, and it answers with a rash of weak shoots along the trunk.
| Underneath | Clear to about |
|---|---|
| Walkway or sidewalk | 8 feet |
| Lawn you have to mow | 8 feet |
| Driveway | 14 feet |
| Street or curb line | 14 feet |
These are the general figures used for street and yard trees, not a rule of the company. A young tree may not have the height to give you all of it yet, and in that case lifting is done over a few years instead of one.
A branch resting on a roof looks like nothing at all from the yard. It is one of the few things in a yard that quietly damages the house.
A branch touching a roof does not sit still. Every breeze drags it across the same few shingles, and asphalt shingles give up their granules to that kind of rubbing. The bare patch it leaves is where the roof starts failing first.
A limb reaching the roof is a road. Rats and squirrels use it to get to the soffit and the attic vents, and ants walk in along it as well. Taking the branch back off the roof line takes the bridge away, which is a great deal simpler than dealing with what came over it.
Anything overhanging the roof drops leaf litter straight into the gutter. A packed gutter holds water against the fascia through the wet season and sends the overflow down the wall instead of away from the house.
Storm season runs from June 1 to November 30, and the daily afternoon storms run through the same months. A limb over the roof in June is a different problem from the same limb in March.
In March a branch over the house is a job you get around to. In June the ground under the tree is saturated, the wind arrives in gusts rather than as a steady blow, and the branch is carrying its full weight of summer leaf. The same limb is now something you are watching from the window.
Tree work brings a lot down onto the beds and the lawn underneath, so these three tend to be part of the same conversation.
Call us and describe the tree, or send us a message through the form. We will come out, look at it, and tell you what we would do to it and whether it is work we take on. There is no obligation once you have an answer.
Seven days a week, 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM. Email cjackc.inc@gmail.com.