Found a rotten core in an old elm before climbing

I was getting ready to climb an elm for a trim and tapped the trunk. It sounded hollow, so I drilled a test hole and found serious decay inside. If I had gone up, the tree could have failed under my weight. I changed plans and removed it from the ground instead. No one got hurt and the client understood why it had to come down.

3 comments

3 Comments

fiona_johnson829d ago

Glad that tapping habit works for more than just melons. @noah415's oak story and stuff like loose steps or a weird car noise show how much we trust surfaces. We ignore the small signs until something's literally rotting under us.

noah41519d ago

My friend had a scare with a big oak once. He tapped it and the sound was off, so he checked with a drill. Turned out to be rotten all through, and he took it down safely from below.

the_brooke19d ago

Remember that time you tapped on something and just knew it was bad? Like @noah415 said, that hollow sound is a dead giveaway. I once had an old wooden deck post that felt soft, so I gave it a tap and it sounded awful. Drilled into it and sure enough, it was eaten up from the inside by termites. Had to replace the whole section before someone put weight on it and it collapsed. It's crazy how similar the warning signs are to trees, makes you wonder what else we're walking past that's ready to fail, lol.