Amazing old trees

Two reasons why you should hire an arborist to cut down the trees in your garden

6 March 2018 by Rose Reyes

If you're on a tight budget and need to cut down one of the trees in your garden, you might be thinking about tackling this job yourself. However, this is not a good idea. Here are two reasons why you should hire an arborist to carry out this task.

You could inflict major damage on your home and endanger those inside it

If you attempt to cut down a tree by yourself, there is a risk that you could inflict major damage on your home or accidentally injure other household members who are inside it during the tree felling process.

The reason for this is as follows; if you do not have any training in tree surgery, it is highly unlikely that you will make the directional notch in the correct area of the trunk (the directional notch is the small cleft that is made in the trunk with an axe or a chainsaw, which determines the direction in which the tree will fall after it is cut down).

If you accidentally put it in a section of the trunk that leads to the tree falling towards your house, rather than away from it, part of the tree could end up landing on the roof.

This could lead to two serious consequences; firstly, the roof of your home could end up sustaining severe damage, in which case it might need to be replaced. This could cost several thousand dollars and might require you to temporarily move out of the property so that the roofing work could be completed.

Secondly, if any other members of your household happen to be inside the house when this incident occurs, they could end potentially up being crushed by the falling roof materials. This could leave them with some very severe injuries.

As such, if you want to avoid accidentally injuring your family members or damaging your house, it is best to hire a professional to handle the tree felling process.

You could seriously injure yourself

If you have no experience with tree felling, there is a good chance that you will end up hurting yourself at some point during the process of cutting down the tree.

There are several reasons for this. Firstly, you may find it difficult to obtain the protective items that you will need to carry out this work safely.

For example, if you intend to use a chainsaw, you will need to protect your ears from the extremely loud sound that this machinery makes. If in this situation, you use some cheap earplugs you have lying around your home, instead of purchasing commercial-grade ear muffs, you could end up with permanent hearing damage (in the form of tinnitus or noise-induced hearing loss).

There also a risk that you could accidentally cut yourself with the chainsaw. Due to the sharpness of a chainsaw's blades and the speed with which they move, this could leave you with extremely deep lacerations.

Finally, if the tree doesn't fall in the direction you were expecting it to but instead falls towards you, you could end up being crushed by the trunk or struck on the head by one of the branches. In either case, you could be left with a serious injury.

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