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Just realized my old lead climber was wrong about topping trees for power line clearance
My old foreman Rick used to drill it into me back in 2019 on a job outside Springfield that you top a tree near lines or you are asking for trouble. I ran into him at a supply yard in Dayton two months ago and he flat out said he regrets teaching me that. He has spent the past four seasons doing utility work and now he says topping just pushes fast weak regrowth right back into the wires in 3 to 5 years, so crews end up back at the same tree over and over. I did the math on one stretch of road near me with 14 topped maples and 11 of them had to be re-cut within 4 years. The better route is directional pruning toward the conductor or just removing the tree and planting something short, even if the homeowner hates it. Rick said the pushback from customers is brutal but the repeat visits cost way less and the trees live longer. So was I taught wrong all those years, or is topping still the only move some of you can make when the line company gives you a deadline and a bucket truck?
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kaib181mo ago
So Rick spent four years learning what every utility arborist has been screaming into the void since forever, lol. Topping a maple is basically giving it a buzz cut and then acting shocked when it grows back with a grudge. Eleven out of fourteen getting re-cut in under four years is actually a pretty good hit rate for the "we'll deal with it later" method, which is to say it's terrible. The deadline and bucket truck excuse is real though, some line crews just want the wire clear by Friday and don't care what the tree looks like in 2028.
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