1. Sectional dismantling and rigging
The default method for a backyard tree. A climber works up the tree, cutting it into pieces small enough to control, and each piece is tied to a rope run through a rigging point higher in the tree and lowered to the ground by the crew. Nothing free-falls. The pieces are then carried out through the side path to the chipper on the street. Branches go through the chipper; trunk sections are cut to a size that can be carried or barrowed. It is slow, deliberate work, and it is why a big tree over a pool costs more than the same tree in an open paddock.
2. Elevated work platform
Where a truck or trailer-mounted platform can reach, often from the street or a driveway, the arborist works from the basket instead of climbing. Our operators are licensed for platforms over 11 metres. It is faster and safer than climbing a tree that is dead or unsound, and it is the usual method for clearing branches from power lines, where our Electrical Close Approach licences apply.
3. Crane
For large trees over houses, or where there is nowhere to lower sections to, a crane lifts whole sections up and over the building to a drop zone on the street or a neighbouring block. The climber attaches each section to the crane hook, cuts it free, and the crane swings it out. It looks dramatic and it adds a day rate, but on a big tree it is often the cheaper option overall because the job that would take two days of rigging takes one, and nothing has to be carried through the house or garden.
4. Barge
Sydney’s waterfront blocks on Port Hacking and the Georges River sometimes have no road access at all: the house is reached by water or by a path too steep for equipment. We have taken the truck and chipper across by barge, worked the tree from the water side, and chipped on the deck. It is the exception, but it is the kind of job a local crew with 20 years on the water knows how to plan.
What this means for the quote
Access is one of the five things that set the price of a removal, with the tree’s size, what is underneath it, the equipment needed and the extras such as stump grinding. Two trees of the same height can differ by thousands of dollars on access alone. That is why we quote on site, free and fixed, rather than from a list, and why a photo of the side path is as useful to us as a photo of the tree. Our guide to what drives the cost has the rest.
Before the crew arrives
- Move cars from the street outside so the truck and chipper can stand close.
- Clear the side path and unlock gates.
- Tell us about anything underground along the route: irrigation, lights, a septic tank.
- If a crane is coming, we will have told you where it stands and arranged any neighbour access already.