Palm Cleaning, Yuck!

OutofMytree

Hey Ken nasty ugly looking job you had to do there. I do a fair few palms and offer my own tips if they help.

Always 2 tie ins and top one must be wire core. You never know what can happen when you are blinded by dust and coughing ya lungs up.

I do not throw near powerlines. Period. With due respect to vl's obviously greater experience I simply do not do it. The risk in skirts dropping is in my opinion far less dangerous than the risk of electrocution. My off-sider is ex power company and he is even more paranoid than me.

Hand saw for dead fronds? Bill, I love you man, but you must smoke what should be going through the chipper. The top handle saw of your choice Ken (I have a couple of 200t's) is the best way to remove a skirt. From a palm tree Ken, not a lady.

Polesaw is a possible starter although they are tough to control high up. I have personally ONLY pruned skirts with a 200t and never even thought of top down until I saw it in another thread. Of course I haven't had a cotton palm to do since then....I look forward to trialling that technique when I can.

My cut technique leaves about an inch sticking out from the trunk. Enough to get your flipline past easily but not so much that the "straps" can be easily torn loose by your spurs.

I take a lifeline up with me clipped onto one of the carry rings on the back of my belt as well as a cambian saver. When I reach the top I wrap the cambian saver around the trunk then slip the climbing rope through as per usual. I descend on my usual prussic and can inspect the work as I go past pruning as and if required. Once on the ground it is easy to remove the cambian saver using the usual stopper knot through the large ring technique. This saves lots of energy compared to flipping down the trunk which is a right royal pain when u get hooked up on the stubs!

I would welcome any educated comment regarding how close to cut those fronds myself as the technique I describe was one I arrived at through observation rather than education. Bill, I hope you read this carefully. I said educated opinion!

ArborealTerror

Hi VL. I watched a documentary about lightning strikes a few years ago where they were talking to survivors. The ones who remembered anything said they felt a slight tingling and the hairs on their neck and scalp stood up. This was their body becoming polarised with negative ions rushing to their feet and positive ones rushing upwards to form a leader for the lightning. They said that if you experience this you should lie down on the ground in the feotal position but did not explain wether this was to protect you or simply save time.

I touched an electric fence when I was about ten to 'see what it was like'. I was just telling my friends that all I could feel was a slight tingling sensation. When I 'came to' I was on the ground about 5 metres away from the fence with incredibly sore kidneys.

If you pass a throwline over a utility line and you are tingling you are a live part of the circuit. It doesn't take too many other variables to change and you will be a dead part of the circuit. They put those things way out of reach for a reason you know!

Victor Lindsay

WOW!

Even with the knowlege I have of power lines, you have enlightened me. I will take your advice, and stay away from them.

See how that works newguy. ArborealTerror & OutofMytree may have just saved my life. There are better ways to clean those palms. Humble yourself!

newguy18

I have,i don't use the false crotch setup.usually the most i work around are service drops but if i'm unsure the 2 power companies know me and will take the service kickers down for free then re install them when i'm done pruning or removing the tree.If i took everyones advice i wouldn't have climbed a slash pine that got struck by lightning and was left stand for 10 years,it was 150' tall but hard as a rock.Afew guy wires and i was all the way to the top,3 previous climbers walked away.i made a game plan and it worked out fine.It took me 8 hours but i got it down in a safe and sane manner[considering the tree and location].I've been in lots of dead or badly rotten trees where i had the feeling that i shouldn't be up here.I've only walked away from 5 trees so far and thats because i knew if i climbed them no matter the prevenitive measures they would have killed me,i don't want someone havign a guilt trip for the rest of thier life because i died in thier tree.I do take advice,only from a select group of people though.

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Therrin

I read all of your guy's posts and was quite interested... (then I got to Bill's and stopped reading )

OOMT,
Thanks alot for the critique and suggestions, I'll most likely incorporate alot of that into my palm technique. Those one's in the pictures were the first 6 that I did and I've done about 14 now. Not much, true, but just getting started.

VL,
The power lines were NOT on the other side of the street, they were on my side. Trust me on this one, I was there. I spent way too much time working way to close to lines and got way too lucky, so now I dont take unnecessary risks. Working around secondaries doesnt bother me too extremely much, but the bigger stuff I stay the hell away from.

All in all, thx for the comments guys!

ArborealTerror

VL - I take my hat off to you sir!
One who can learn so readily from the experience of others is clearly an enlightened individual.

BTW Ken - I was so het up on my soapbox I forgot to comment on your palms. DAMN - what a way to meet a washingtonia. I take my hat off to you also sir for a difficult job well done.

Therrin

Well thank you for that!

Yeah it certainly wasnt any fun. The whole time I was up there I was cursing them and reminding myself just why exactly it was that you guys hate them.

It also helped to have my mp3 player, run the wires up under my shirt and have my headphones under my ear muffs. Put on some good hard & heavy music and it gets you pumped up. Kinda helps to break the monotony of continually tunnling upward through the skirt and time after time hoping to see green and not seeing it.
Every so often I'd push myself through the skirt and let a little air in and try to look up and see how much longer I had to go to get to the green stuff.

newguy18

So ken,yuo never did say if you found any critters in those palm,no snakes or wasps?

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old schooler

Therrin

Couple spiders, some birdsnests, and a squirrel's nest but it was vacant when I got to it.

ArborealTerror

I am arachnophobic (scared witless by spiders), but I find when I am 'in the zone' the creepies don't seem to worry me too much. I suppose if you weren't mentally detached you would need to be rescued everytime a spur slipped. You all find the same or do you have scary moments?

newguy18

One time i was removing the top out of an oak and i had a spur cut out right as the top was going over and i yelled shit,then after i reset it i look down and the clients grandkids were down there.

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ArborealTerror

OMG - don't normally find kids that scary. I am glad nothing unfortunate happened. Doesn't your groundie secure the drop zone?

newguy18

they were a good bit away[approx. 100' in the other direction]I just didn't have my one spur set too well,hasn't happened again.

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Victor Lindsay

chech out this youtube.

newguy18

seen it 5 times already,its also in the video forum.

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old schooler

Victor Lindsay

This one didn't make it. Very sad. They don't know their life is on the line.

L.A. Now | Underground electrical blast; 4 downtown L.A. buildings evacuated | Los Angeles Times

L.A. Now | Underground electrical blast; 4 downtown L.A. buildings evacuated | Los Angeles Times

The solution is in ANSI Z133.1 9.2.6.

Victor Lindsay

Here's anouther,

Tree-trimmer gets stuck! | Firechannel

Eric Frei

Thank you for posting this information.

I saddens me to read that some goof ball OHS idiot would say something like this.

Yep, it’s a precarious occupation, and a 23 year old young man is DEAD! Just a statistic to that fool it appears.

I have been saying long enough that palm cleaning is dangerous, more dangerous than tree trimming, it is one of the most dangerous things you'll do ... sadly the unregulated, unlicenced and now apparently "un-OHS cared about" profession can just continue their work as it is a precarious occupation you know.

I wonder if the customer took the cheapest bid/quote?

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newguy18

My thought go out,Ekke is right though,real dangerous,i approach the ones with a full beard,start on the ground with a pole saw,just a manual one and lop of fronds as high as i can reach,the go about,5-10' up,and trim away some more.It keeps you about 5'-10 away rom the fronds,i reckon even if they would break off,by the time they slid 5-10' the shock from hitting your flipline would break most off them apart.

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old schooler

Victor Lindsay

I cleaned the seed pods off of four royal palms today. Back yard, so i had to use an adjustable false crotch, then Ddrt up. The royals you cann't spike, and using a ladder is out. I can charge a good price because no one knows how to safetly climb them down here. I clean the washys the same way. It satisfies the ANSI Z133.1 9.2.6 standard for cleaning palms with skirt growth three years or more .

dannyboysfc

Well I haven't really been a regular around TW lately, so I missed this thread by a little while. Anyway, GOOD JOB Ken. Im sure that wasn't an easy task, especially being your first time. for not taking too many green fronds, and going up with 2 fliplines. Did you clean all the flowers from the heads of those palms?

I usually go up same as you except use climb line as my second flip untill I reach the top at which point I tie into the palm kinda over and behind the top then continue working, then decend with it once finished.

treefeller

Looks like a good job youve done their

Therrin

Thanks!

BTW, in the last few months, a guy down south of here in Longbeach, Ca died while cleaning palms... suffocated. And another guy just a week or so later had to wait a couple hours for the Fire Dept to come cut him loose.

Apparently the second guy was working on his own or something and it took a few hours for someone to figure out that he needed help?? Strange... Sucks to be him.

And they wonder why we dont trim them up for $50 apiece...

Done it

Ken, vl2007 posted those stories while you were away. Sad stuff.

Tree trimmer trapped in palm dies | L.A. Now | Los Angeles Times

Eric Frei

Just out, another case.
Man crushed to death under palm tree fronds

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Therrin

Awww.... It seems that stuff like that has been happening alot more frequently. I hate hearing that stuff.

I think that as normal arborist and tree-working professionals are getting turned away by homeowners not willing to pay normal (or at least decent) rates during the recession.... the mexicans are picking up the slack by trying to get the work by undercutting, and as a result they dont know what they're doing and are having more accidents.

Eric Frei

I don't know what it is with your Washingtonia palms getting that heavy a skirt, 2000lb is a metric tonne.

And I've never had a skirt fall, all had to be cut or picked off.

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Victor Lindsay

Wow, anouther one, sad. This is a good thread for all of us who clean palms. It should make us think about how we do what we do.

Therrin

I've only done a couple dozen palms by now, not many as far as most of you guys.

Still though, I haven't had any trouble with them. I suppose its that way with most guys until it kills them.

And yes Ekka, you get one that's 80 ft tall and has 60 ft of dead skirt on it. After doing some close to that bad, it doesnt suprise me how the skirt can get to weighing quite a bit.

Scary though.

newguy18

Can we do a prescribed burn palm skirts?

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old schooler