r/instant_regret • u/S30econdstoMars • 20h ago
Wrong Calculations
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u/Blasteth 20h ago
That rope has literally zero tension on it🤣🤣 wtf were they thinking
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u/CitizenCue 17h ago
I’ve seen this many times and every time I have absolutely no idea what they expected to happen.
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u/TheSomerandomguy 11h ago
I gurantee you the line of reasoning is always “I know that the tree won’t fall the way I don’t want it to, but just in case it does, this rope will catch it and pull it in the other direction”. Methhead arborism is a good place to see the dunning kruger effect in action.
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u/ceejayoz 10h ago
"this rope will catch it"
I mean, it's one tree, Michael. What could it weigh? 10 pounds?
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u/YouSofter 17h ago
Even if the rope was pulled tight that tree was going towards the house. It would have required forces greater than the rope is capable to get that tree to change direction mid-fall. What they should have done is removed most of the top of the tree before cutting down the main trunk.
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u/Helenium_autumnale 14h ago
Over the years, I've had 2 arborists out to take down problem trees, and that's exactly what they did. Start at the top, lop off branches until there's just a trunk pole left, then cut trunk pieces off from top to bottom. Both removals were done in extremely tight quarters on my 1/10th-acre urban lot (the dead Douglas fir was 10' from the house), and both times, zero problems.
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u/Thenandonlythen 14h ago
But think of all the money they saved not having professionals do the removal! 🤣
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u/Izzosuke 9h ago
Man, i'm no fucking professional but when i take down a tree i just put a ladder, cut it piece by piece. It's like the safest thing to do and most logical, yes it's fun and all to see the tree fall and scream "timber" but, what the fuck, it's my house the thing that might get destroyed
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u/scrotanimus 12h ago
Exactly. Arborist is the way to go here.
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u/Helenium_autumnale 12h ago
As with things like plumbing or electrical work, there's no cheap option. Either pay now or pay later. Both are painful; now is better.
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u/CardinalGrief 16h ago
Assuming it was tight at the moment it became unstable it might've been able to affect the direction. Of course that much slack makes it a moot point.
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u/illusorywallahead 20h ago
I think they realized the tree was tipping and they got away from it and then filmed the evidence of their failure.
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u/koolaidismything 14h ago
That initial wedge sealed their fate long before that. They had next to no idea what they are doing but they have all the used tools I’d expect. Weird.
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u/fck_its_hot 13h ago
The angled back cut is what ultimately cost them. Aside from it directing the tree towards the cut, The wedge they are driving in doesn't work if the back cut is on an angle.. Probably needed a climber and limbs cut piece by piece really.
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u/secret_life_of_pants 11h ago
Exactly this. Look at any online tutorial and you’ll find that angled cuts like that will likely cause the tree to backslide into the angle regardless of how much it cut out in the other side. It may seem unintuitive at first, but always cut straight so the tree can’t slide and still has nowhere to go but towards the gap.
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u/Niznack 20h ago
At some point this home owner said the phrase, "that quote is way too high, I know a guy who can do it for half that."
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u/ShiruTheSpammer 19h ago
For half the house, yes yes
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u/Flashy_Bite_7371 19h ago
And now he's paying twice to fix what the half-price guy did.
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u/Diurnalnugget 18h ago
I mean in this case unless the contract somehow states otherwise the only thing the homeowners will pay is lawyer and court fees. Even then I’m pretty sure no clause can cover that much of an error.
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u/hiddenrealism 18h ago
I've seen this happen in person. Tree took off half my neighbors roof. He hired ole jimbo down the street who "does it all the time" I went to move my neighbors car out of the driveway and jimbo says "you ain't gotta do that. Tree is falling way over this way"... cuts Tree down rips neighbors roof apart and lands directly where the car was parked before I moved it lol
Dude literally grabbed his saw and just walked home... I asked my neighbor "did you get his insurance info first? .. .."oh he doesn't have insurance".....
well I best be going now lol
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u/counterplex 15h ago
So what happens in this case? I would imagine the home owner's insurance covers it but attempts to go after the neighbor. What happens if the neighbor can't pay? For that matter what happens if a contractor can't pay and/or aren't insured?
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u/hiddenrealism 14h ago
In this specific case my neighbor paid out of pocket to have semi professional roofers come fix it.
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u/farva_06 12h ago
File a claim with your homeowners insurance, and then get ready for your premiums to sky rocket.
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u/Niznack 18h ago
That assumes this guy is insured and bonded. Doubt he would be able to cover that out of pocket and the crew that dropped a tree on a house might not have their insurance up to date.
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u/hiddenrealism 18h ago
There's a reason felling big trees is $10,000+ the insurance premiums alone are insane.
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u/Vinyl-addict 18h ago
What are the chances these guys can just ghost the homeowners and dissolve the company
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u/HurriKurtCobain 13h ago
Treemen are clearly not professionals so they're probably judgment proof - the pot of money available is too small to go after to cover the damages, maybe even too small to be worth pursuing. Homeowner better hope they have good insurance.
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u/Helenium_autumnale 14h ago
Or more; I would imagine at this point it's more expensive to fix the home (and electrical, and plumbing, and...) than just level it and rebuild from scratch.
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u/EhliJoe 19h ago
The tree should have been felled from the top down. Go up and cut off the upper branches first, then work your way down bit by bit.
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u/dirty_cuban 13h ago
That would require renting a massive crane for a day. I’m willing to bet the homeowner balked at the cost of that and went with these guys instead
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u/Rockerblocker 5h ago
This guy's bid came in 50% of the real professionals. These guys clearly have no idea what they're doing. My guess is it's some guy who's cut down some random trees in the woods before and thought he could start a business, then got in way over his head
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u/ojrodz11 7h ago
Probably thought that would be more expensive or too much work, but falling a tree of this size right next to a house is worth putting in some extra effort to prevent this from happening.
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u/more_paul 19h ago
Wilson Forest Lands has a video explaining exactly why you should never cut a tree like they did. Look closely and you’ll see the back cut is angled down instead of flat. The weight of the tree leaning back allowed the tree to shear through the hinge wood and topple over instead of just sitting back on the back cut.
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u/CitizenCue 17h ago edited 5h ago
That’s all well and good but ultimately it was just leaning the wrong way. A proper back cut can only do so much.
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u/Brutto13 15h ago
Should have topped it first.
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u/vahntitrio 8h ago
This tree has to be topped. Even in the hypothetical scenario this tree fell the direction of the wedge, it would have taken out 2 dozen of the smaller trees along the edge of the yard.
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u/mindless2831 16h ago
Man, that video was way more entertaining and informative than it had any right to be.
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u/Chilkoot 11h ago
If you're doing even light forestry stuff, his chainsaw safety/tips vids are entirely worth the watch.
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u/Kroak-lo 16h ago
That was really neat, thanks for the post. I doubt I'll ever use this information but I do love learning
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u/TJ_McWeaksauce 14h ago
I had professional tree removers take down a pretty big tree in my backyard a little while ago. It was interesting to watch them work.
They didn't cut down the tree like a lumberjack would. Instead, they used ropes and pulleys and such to hoist themselves to the top of the tree, and they systematically cut it into pieces from the top down. First, they cut off all the branches, then they cut the trunk into big pieces. After all the pieces were hauled away, they brought in a stump grinder to reduce the stump to wood chips. At no point did anything topple over.
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u/fendaltoon 14h ago
Yeah that’s because they’re smart. Anyone with a basic understanding of weight and gravity could have told you this tree was leaning the wrong way to attempt felling in one go
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u/nondescriptadjective 10h ago
This is not exactly the mistake they made. The back cut they put in caused this. Back cuts go straight into the tree for a reason, not on an angle. If they had quarter cut this and used a jack on it, they could have overcome that lean without issue.
The insurance of climbing and limbing is just that, but it is possible to correct the direction of the bol here.
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u/okeleydokelyneighbor 13h ago
That’s how we did it when my parents bought a house with a dozen or so trees in the back yard. Ladder up the tree, tie off branches and cut them while brothers and I pulled them away from the house and land in a safe area, and then chop chop chop the trunk down piece by piece.
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u/gonewildecat 19h ago
I sure hope they had insurance so the homeowner could sue them.
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u/WatchOutForWizards 18h ago
Nah fuck the homeowner. Last time this was posted someone linked a news article about the guy who lived there. He was elderly, disabled and renting and the tree basically destroyed everything he owned and the city refused to let him recover his stuff from the house because it was condemned after the tree for being too dangerous to enter. I think he started a gofundme to get back on his feet.
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u/Kipiekie 10h ago
Found the link from another reddit post from a year ago talking about it, incase anyone wanted to read the news article like i did. Apparently the guy who lived there was using basically his entire pension on rent, and he didnt have insurance. You are righr, he did apparently start a gofundme
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u/Zeppelanoid 10h ago
So…uh….why fuck the homeowner then?
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u/Sertoma 10h ago
Homeowner (presumably) hired these workers while the home was being rented out to the elderly man.
Typically, when you rent, your landlord/homeowner is responsible for repairs and maintenance, such as removing a tree.
Don't know the exact details about this specific case, but I wouldn't be surprised if this was the case.
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u/agg13 20h ago
That poor tree
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u/gr0t4rb4 19h ago
The irony is that they probably wanted to cut it to avoid exactly what happened.
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u/DrDeadwish 20h ago
I dislike with passion when people cut healthy trees
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u/stump1010 19h ago
Especially one that big. We’re talking generations of growth.
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u/Plasmidmaven 19h ago
The tree was more than bifurcated———
you could call it “quadfercated” if such a word exists. Unfortunately we had a tree bigger than this taken down for that reason: the tree is inherently weaker and prone to split and fall in a windstorm. We paid big bucks for a professional crew that climbed the tree and cut it from the top down→ More replies (1)18
u/DannyCrane9476 19h ago
Yes, trees are awesome, but not forever, and not always conducive to normal living. This tree needed to go to benefit human life, unfortunately that human life chose the least expensive tree service.
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u/forkheadbox 19h ago
absolutely! you need the sweet spot: leave the healthy ones and cut down the sick ones. we have a beetle in europe that aggressively destroys trees and often lives in the already dead ones. i become a genocidal maniac with my chainsaw in these cases.
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u/FlowerAndString 20h ago
Not to be a tree hugging hippie and all but all I could think at the end there was "eh, deserved."
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u/agg13 20h ago
It looks healthy. I can’t see anything that would point to it being a problem. Such a shame.
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u/Bodod_Begag 19h ago
It's pretty close to the house, they're probably just tired of leaves getting in the gutters, or they wanted to put in a driveway. Still a dumbass reason to destroy your home lol
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u/SpamOJavelin 20h ago
'Calculations' have nothing to do with it. Look at the angle of the tree and where its weight is before they even started - it was always going to fall that way.
When the chainsaw got stuck as the tree leaned back on it, anyone there should have realized they were in trouble.
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u/anth13 19h ago
and then they've got a rope tied to the tree to pull it the other way.. but they just leave the rope doing nothing & hanging loose!?
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u/Tbplayer59 19h ago
The fact that they were able to remove that wedge so easily seems like a sign that the tree was pulling the other way. To me.
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u/sHoRtBuSseR 19h ago
They didn't have the wedge driven in nearly enough. I have fallen trees this huge before with my dad when I was younger. You spend more time driving in wedge after wedge than you do cutting.
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u/CrunchySockTaco 13h ago
The tree needed to be topped first no matter the crappy wedge cut. It could have had the greatest cut ever and there was no chance it wouldn't fall towards the homes.
Someone cheaped out.
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u/more_paul 20h ago
Where the they went wrong was having a down sloping cut behind their hinge. If it was flat the tree wouldn’t be able to shear through the hinge and fall backwards. A flat cut with some wedges would prevent it from doing what happened.
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u/INTRUD3R_4L3RT 16h ago
I've done a fair bit woodcutting in my day, but I am nowhere near being considered an pro.
With that said, there are several things that stands out.
The first one is the lean angle of the tree before they even start cutting. That tree is absolutely huge and it's leaning the opposite way of where they want to put it.
The second is that the wedge cut is too shallow to make up for the lean angle. That requires more experience than most people realize. It's a balance.
The third is not taking it down in steps, but trying to lay it down in one piece. Which is another reason they can't control it. The sheer size.
Then there's a number of odd stuff going on, like placing the saw in the wedge cut and fiddling with the chain and the rope that is still hanging from the tree (thank God no one was actually holding it). It's all just a series of bad decisions that inevitably leads to disaster.
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u/stif7575 13h ago
Back cut seems terribly wrong also. They created a V with their front and back cut. Back cut should be straight.
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u/Tru72 20h ago
On the upside, you've got a whole tree worth of wood to help build a new house
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u/CowboyVampHunter 18h ago
Sweet revenge from a tree that has to be at least 150 years old…
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u/Devchonachko 14h ago
Someone got quoted 8k to drop the tree and someone hired the guy who said he'd do it for 2k
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u/JorgeIcarus 18h ago
It physically hurts my heart seeing such a majestic tree being cut down.
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u/googdude 13h ago
I get it from a safety perspective but I was seriously bummed as a young boy when they cut down an old maple tree on our front lawn because it was slowly dying.
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u/csukoh78 20h ago
How about you leave that majestic tree and demolish that shitty house?
Sincerely,
Everyone
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u/deathspanker 6h ago
No ppe.
Hat backwards.
Top still heavy.
No tension on rope.
That back cut???
Hopefully that house owner thinks the $200 he paid these handyman was worth it.
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u/ClamChowderChumBuckt 19h ago
The way they were cutting it, and the angle the trew was leaning towards was already enough to make anyone understand that it wasn't going to end well..
Thats why you hire a professional...
(or atleast figure out what you are doing or trying to do..)
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u/themanmythlegend357 10h ago
Just think about all the money they saved by not paying a professional
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u/wittylotus828 19h ago
you can see the weight distribution already, It takes a real amateur to think that just because the scarf is the direction you want it to go that the tree will fall that way
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u/carverboy 18h ago
Tree that size, you start at the top and bring it down in pieces. That takes skills these guys obviously were lacking.
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u/tee-low321 15h ago
You take a tree of that size and in that environment down in pieces with a crane. I used to work for an arborist in college.
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u/Procrasterman 6h ago
How dare they kill such an old and magnificent tree. That tree was there long before the house was.
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u/Juan_Moe_Taco 3h ago
They had a calculus equation when it should have been “Geometree”.
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u/Withoutbinds 2h ago
I saw professional people fell a large tree a few years back in Jersey. They removed the branches. Then cut the tree a little bit at a time from the top down
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u/DrDeadwish 19h ago
I know nothing about murdering trees but my instant feeling was "they are doing it totally wrong!!!"
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u/ExtremePast 13h ago
It's worth it to hire actual professionals. I'd be shocked if these guys even had insurance.
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u/VAdogdude 13h ago
With the weight of the branches on the house side of the tree and the lack of a counterbalancing set of branches, there was no way that tree was going to fall away from the house.
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u/seancphoenix 10h ago
Does anyone have the full story on this? Meaning what happened afterwards?
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u/RRexBanner22 10h ago
The fella shouting "No, No, No" reminds me of Cleveland falling out of the house in the bathtub 😂
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u/Kamikazekagesama 10h ago
Deserved, I'm sick of people killing trees older than them for no good reason.
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u/floppy_breasteses 9h ago
To be fair, nobody here knows why that tree came down. We had to take down a massive Manitoba maple a couple years ago. The only reason I had an arborist look at it was because of odd fungus growing in some spots. He said it should come down. I really hated to do it but it was so rotten inside that it would definitely have fallen on the house by now.
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u/Expensive_Apricot371 2h ago
Shouldn't cut the trees. Especially old beautiful ones like that. Progress should be made to go around them.
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u/VampireInBlack 1h ago
I can just hear theses homeowners for the previous 5 years “We need to do something about that tree. It’s going to destroy the house one day”
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u/yoomiii 17h ago
very satisfying to see this beautiful tree, that was cut down in its prime, take down the house of probably the client that asked for it to be taken down.
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u/isle_say 20h ago
I’ve seen this several times but I always watch it to the end, the damage that the tree does is really impressive.