Felling a Giant Fir

We Cut Down a Giant Fir Tree

July 2007

We fell in love with our building lot on Mercer Island, the instant we first saw it, partly because of all the huge fir trees still standing on it. On a third of an acre lot there were a dozen firs that were 120 to 150 feet tall. We had to cut one down to make way for the living room of the house we built. It was about four feet in diameter at the stump and I counted approximately 150 growth rings. The biggest tree stood in what eventually became our front Japanese-style garden. It was easily five feet across at the base and must have been close to 200 years old. We had romantic notions about living in the woods nestled in among these giants and our architect arranged the house so we only had to cut one down before building.

Figure 1. Domestication of the Giant Fir

Figure 1 shows a photo montage of the huge tree in our Japanese garden. In its original glory it was over 150 feet tall. In the montage Judy is on a ladder hugging the tree and I am tugging on a rope trying to domesticate it for life in an urban yard rather than life in the deep forest. Over the years I have taken many photos and the big fir was always a prominent feature in each composition.

Figure 2. Big Fir in Snow at Dusk, circa 1998

However, by the time we built the house and had lived in it for 15 years many of our romantic notions about a fir shaded homestead had been beaten down by a few hard, cold facts. Fir trees are really not suited to being domestic yard trees like oaks, elms, maples and the like. They do not like having houses built near them, nor do they appreciate people and machines stomping about their roots, compacting the soil. They are susceptible to various fungal infections and polluted urban air. Limbs tear off and rot gets inside. They can get old and sick. And then, when a big windstorm comes, they can fall over. A good sized fir, when it falls, can slice through a house like the proverbial knife through warm butter. And a 150 foot tree, standing in the middle of our lot, has the potential to take out not only our house, but the neighbor�s as well.

So, when the big winter windstorms would arrive each year, we would lie in bed at night and worry about our monster in the garden. Over the years we had various forestry types come out and examine the tree. They would kick the bark, try to take core samples (the tree was so large they could not get a core drill to go to the center without breaking off), and they would peer learnedly up at the crown. The concensus was that it had not fallen over yet, it was not completely healthy but was not too unhealthy either, and someday it for certain was going to blow over. The problem was predicting when that event might occur. If it would just stay up another 30 years or so somebody else could worry about it.

Meanwhile, life proceeded. We built a water feature around the base of the tree. We built garden fences and a large Japanese-style gate with a tile roof over it. And, as described elsewhere on this website, we built a two mat Japanese teahouse. All in the front garden, all within 20-30 feet of the tree. There was almost no direction it could fall without doing very serious damage.

Somewhere around 2002 we noticed that the top of the tree was dying. The top 5 feet or so became bare gray wood instead of bark and green branches. After much discussion, we called in an arborist who took 30 feet off the top. At this time the teahouse was not yet built and the arborist was able to cut successive rounds from the top of the tree and just push them over the side to hit the ground with a tremendous WHOOMP. The notion, we were told, was that this would both remove dead wood and reduce some of the tree�s �sail�. There would be less for the wind to push against and therefore less chance of blowing over. We were assured that such action would have little effect on the tree�s overall health. It would heal over and life would continue as before.

And so it seemed for a while. Figure 3 shows our 2006 Christmas card which featured the tree standing regally in the Japanese garden. The tree was a massive presence in the front garden and we absolutely hated the thought of losing it. And we absolutely hated the thought of it squashing us in our bed some night or knifing through the kitchen.

Figure 3. The Big Fir and Garden in Fall Color

Then came the big blows of winter 2006-2007. Trees came down all over Mercer Island and the Northwest. Strange tales abounded, like the tree that bisected a house to the foundations, leaving the wife stranded unharmed in one side of the house with the husband stranded in the other. Our immediate neighbor to the East was especially hard hit. Three fir trees came down in his lot. Two hit his house, caused some damage, and then bounced back partially upright. The third fell flat, missed his house, and caused minor damage to another neighbor farther East. The further neighbor had no sense of humor and threatened to sue if our immediate neighbor did not promptly cut down all remaining fir trees in his lot. So there was a lot of logger activity right next door. A small positive outcome was that we got to know the logger, a most cheerful and muscular individual named Tim Brown.

Tim seemed to be most happy when 50-100 feet up in a fir tree, wielding a Stihl chainsaw with a 36 inch bar like a light saber. He and his crew were experts at teasing large trees out of tricky urban settings without further damaging nearby buildings. If need be he would simply take a tree apart, chunk by chunk, lowering each piece down by rope. It soon became apparent that we needed his services.

Early Spring of 2007 I was on a trip visiting my parents in Tennessee when another big storm blew up. Judy had the joy of looking out the window at one of the firs on the South side of our house and watching it tilt over at a 45 degree angle, aimed right smack at our poor beleaguered neighbor�s house. Fortunately it did not blow down, but it clearly had to come down fast. We called Tim and within a couple of weeks he had it taken it down to a 30 foot spar pole that we left as a woodpecker tree.

Then, with Tim�s help, we took a closer look at the giant in our front garden. For several years Judy had been noticing large colonies of carpenter ants thriving in the base of the tree. The local woodpeckers also noticed and we would often walk out and see a Pileated Woodpecker, like some dinosaur relic, ripping away huge chunks of bark. About the time of the big windstorm we also noticed bracket fungi growing from the side of the tree, 15-20 feet above ground. The tree was dying and we painfully made the decision that our monster friend had to come down, and the sooner the better.

Now we faced another problem. With all the structures we had built around the tree there was no direction in which it could be felled, nor was there anyplace left to drop rounds cut successively from the top. Tim thought he could cut chunks from the top of the tree and lower each chunk by rope. But with such a large tree that would have been an agonizingly slow process, probably taking several weeks of work. The obvious solution was to bring in a crane. But there was almost no place to park a crane big enough to handle our tree � especially with dangerous power lines that run along the front edge of our property. The power company was approached about temporarily turning off the power. Yes, they would do so � for a mere $100,000. So we agonized for a few weeks. Finally, Tim located a crane company that thought it could fit a proper sized machine into the parking pad in front of our garage and delicately avoid the power lines. We decided to go for it.

Tim would have to climb the tree and cut it down in 12 foot sections, each section being lowered to the ground by crane. Such an operation produces an enormous amount of saw dust. So, in preparation, I built a plywood platform at the base of the tree (so we would a level place to stand on and a place to lower branches) and then Judy and I covered the entire garden with blue tarps to keep sawdust off the plants and out of the waterworks.

Figure 4. The Garden Draped with Blue Tarps

Figure 4 shows the yard covered in blue tarps and sawdust after most of the cutting was finished. It looks like a disaster zone but covering the yard actually did a good job of protecting the garden.

With the garden covered Tim climbed the tree, cutting off limbs as he went, and lowering each limb on a rope. On the ground, Mike (Tim�s partner) and I cut the limbs into smaller chunks and threw them onto a truck to be hauled to a mulching station. After a day�s hard work the tree was a bare 120 foot pole and the crane was brought in. When the crane driver saw how close the power lines were he nearly turned around and went home. But Tim convinced him to give it a try.

Figure 5 shows the crane in position ready to take off the first 12 foot section. If you look closely you can see Tim as a tiny figure near the top of the pole. The dreaded power lines are clearly visible in the upper right of the photo. The way it worked, Tim would loop a cable from the crane tightly around the top of the pole, as shown in Figure 6. Then he would slide down the pole and cut off a 12 foot section. Cutting produced a huge cloud of dust that always seemed to blow back right into his face (Figure 7). As the cut was finished (Figure 8) the crane would take up the weight, lift the section, and gingerly swing it around to be lowered to the ground (Figure 9).


Figure 5. Crane in Place	Figure 6. Attaching the Crane Cable


Figure 7. Starting the Cut	Figure 8. The Cut is Finished


Figure 9. Lowering 5,000 pounds to the Ground

According to the strain meter on the crane, the larger sections weighed nearly 5,000 pounds and were near the limit the crane could handle. To our infinite relief, the whole operation was accomplished with no significant mishaps. Figure 10 shows Tim on his cell phone, relaxing after all sections were on the ground.

Figure 10. Tim on the Ground, all Sections Lowered

Postmortem exam verified that we did a good thing by cutting the tree down. Fungus and rot were present throughout its interior. In fact, the wood was in such poor shape we were unable to sell the logs to a sawmill (which would have helped defray some of the shocking cost of the operation). Semi funny side story. The logs went to a dump. Some enterprising individuals saw them, rented a truck, and hauled them off to a sawmill, looking to earn a bit of windfall cash. Tim gleefully related to us that the second mill also rejected the logs causing some depression on the part of the enterprising individuals.

We left a fairly large stump to provide more woodpecker habitat (this will probably be the eventual fate of most of our large fir trees) and Tim finished it off by cutting the top into an irregular shape. You can see the finished stump in Figure 11. Then I got back into the act to turn the stump into a piece of garden sculpture. I took some chunks of wood and band sawed them into stylized shapes of ravens and salmon. The ravens were painted black and the salmon became various hues of red and green. The birds and fish were then affixed to the stump with wooden dowels. Figures 11 and 12 show me working on the stump. Figure 13 shows one view of the finished �sculpture�.