Help...

skai

Hi everyone...I have been trying to find a answer to my question for awhile now...I hope someone here can help me. I just bought a piece of property and to my delight has a weeping willow on it...and then to me dismay I found out it is too close to my house...pipes...septic tank. So I feel I need to remove it before I am faced with unwanted repairs later. I was told that I can't just cut it down...that the roots will continue to roam...is this true? What is the best, cheap way to remove this tree myself? Sad in Indiana...

newguy18

I'm not to familiar with that species but around here the live oak,slash pine and other have roots that will continue to grow after the tree is removed.It is only for the next growing season and then it usually sops but there are exceptions. pics will help but if it cannot be felled from the ground i suggest yuo not try it yourself as it gets really risky really fast.If it needs to be climbed get an isa certified arborist to do it.

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old schooler

Garry Brockley

simply the best way is to get in a professional crew, dont be tempted by a cheap fix from some hack door knocker you will only end up paying more, a professional is not the company with more equipment its the one who is qualified and you have seen some of their work pics or from a recomendation.
I have done numerous weeping willow take downs due to being too close to the property.
simply take down and grind out the stump you will get the odd sapling coming up from the rizome roots but ive never seen one carry on running its roots out and im still looking after a few places where weve done takedowns in the last 10 years.
hope this helps

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Tom_B

Yep. Totally agree with that mate. Nothing more needs to be said!!!

Eric Frei

We have a few species here that like to send up shoots from there roots even after a stump grind.

Another idea is inject the buggers with round-up 1 week prior to Take Down, then the poison would have relocated to the roots. If you time this well the leaves will still be on the tree, if you time it bad you'll do a lot of raking up.

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Garry Brockley

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wulkowicz

I have a simple question. If the Willow was already there and did indeed delight you, what happened that made you think it should come down? Were there problems with the septic system that no one told you about before the sale, or did someone say later, "oh no, the damn tree is going to screw everything up."

If I were a willow intent on luxurious growth and had gotten to the size where I would delight someone, then a nearby septic friend probably was a part of my enriched youth.

I built a three acre formal park in Chicago some 15 years ago where very drop of water that fell as rain was saved and not sent to the sewers. I provided drainage, irrigation, and aeration without any moving parts or any pipes to invade. It was simple, cheap, and I figured the useful life of the design to be about 100 years. And please remember, this was a park filled with trees.

It was a demonstration project that I used to turn a whole bunch of traditional civil engineering standards upside down. At every point I could, I built a reciprocal; I used designs that were opposite and contrarian.

Pipes had no pitch-- and hell, for the most part I didn't even use pipes. The engineers complained they couldn't use tables for circular cross-sections and they growled angrily when I talked about wall-less pipes.

Generally, we use trenches to get pipes down into the ground. I used the trenches period.

The trenches followed the landscape architects designs for the trees and shrubberies, and were immediately available for the roots from the tree balls as soon as they ventured out and sniffed the new soils.

I control the water level inside the park to an 1/8 of an inch and only had to externally refill the park three times in the 15 years during a few severe droughts. I did it myself and only took a few hours each time.

I anticipated at the Chicago Park District really wouldn't maintain the trees after they were planted. The district proved me right. Without maintenance, either irrigation or ordinary tree care, only one tree was lost and that was in the first month after it had been planted; really the result of being transported a few hundred miles without a tarp.

I anticipated roaming roots and welcomed them. The bogeyman tales about willows and septic fields are really in the initial selection of plastic distribution pipes with only 16% openings. I tried in to shoot for 100% openings with off the shelf geoextile drains. They're still doing well, and I've got only 85 years to go.

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If you really like your tree, you should be extra particular about listening to the advice about taking it down. It does not follow that a tree is always an enemy of a septic field. A little common sense thinking in the design and placement of the materials can go a long way in allowing the two to live together.

Absolutely yes, if the tree roots can fill the pipe openings, you can have a problem, but taking the tree down does not eliminate the problem. The roots are still there and they have a physical presence that will continue long after the tree is gone.

Successive owners invariably pay for the mistakes in work done for previous owners; it doesn't matter if it's a roof or a septic system. Successive owners also plant trees in dumb places and looked puzzled when the tree outflanks them.

There will probably be a lot of opinions about this, but arborsits and plumbers build their second homes with the help of trees.

Put as much energy and figure out how to keep the tree, as gets expanded in figuring out how to kill the great beast. I do realize and admit that I have not seen the tree or the site, but you are the new owner and there's nothing wrong and spending a little time saving what likely will be a long-lived neighbor.

Now that I think about it, I would've been quite happy to make park 480--Willow Park. But by now there would be complaints from neighbors about cutting back the low hanging branches because there's entirely too much trashy behavior going on inside. (I actually did get a really angry complaint about that in a small park in Chicago. When I went out to look at it, all I could find were two small shrubs that could never accommodate a prostitute and her client. I did call back about not punishing the two shrubs because there seem to be an endless supply of gangways on the block.)



Bob Wulkowicz

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wulkowicz

Here you are...

Attached Files

park-480-st2.pdf (1.04 MB, 36 views)

wulkowicz

Lord give me patience...

Attached Files

park-480-st4.pdf (1.04 MB, 38 views)