Trees Can Be Fatal
Lastly, I would like to discuss safety. Again, trees being such a unique part of your landscape, they require more due diligence than other aspects. A falling tree can be fatal, and it can cause hundreds of thousands of dollars in property losses. Even a falling limb can be a serious life-safety issue.
For the most competent and qualified vendors, doing a property walk to identify potential issues should be a very low-cost investment. Beware of tree services that will provide inspections for free. You have to ask yourself if the person on the ground is really qualified to be telling you about the dangers present if their time is not worth paying for. An annual inspection is plenty.
Here are three kinds of things that you will want to keep an eye out for:
1. Cavities in trees, especially Bradford Pear and American Elms. Cavities are weak points in the tree’s structure. Just because a tree is green, it does not mean that it is safe.
2. Mushrooms or strange growths at the base of the trees. Funguses, like mushrooms growing out of the base roots of a tree, are a good indication that the wood in this part of the tree is decaying. To give you an understanding of decayed wood – if you have ever picked up an old piece of rotten firewood, it is not stable and will fall apart in your hand. This is not what you want holding up a tree.
3. Deadwood. Even healthy trees produce deadwood. These are limbs that have died due to a lack of sunlight on that particular limb. In this way, trees are self-pruning, meaning they will cut off nutrients to a branch that isn’t producing well. The problem is that the dead limb will just hang up in the tree until it eventually loses its rigidity. Meaning, eventually it will fall out. With our densely packed multifamily properties, the likelihood of the limb falling on a car or another target is high. Prune deadwood out annually during routine maintenance. Trees, as discussed earlier, provide many benefits, but keeping your residents and property safe should be a top priority in property management.
To learn more about trees, proper tree care services, or to hire a top-rated tree service team, contact Urban Foresters today. Our professionals are local, insured, and will treat you just like family. Give us a call to schedule an appointment!
Grant Crowell is the founder of The Urban Foresters, a Houston tree service company since 2010. They do tree trimming, tree removal, tree fertilization, stump grinding and just about anything else dealing with trees. They handle residential work, neighborhood HOA trees, apartment communities, office buildings, industrial sites, city flood control areas and even pipeline rights-of-way. Where trees need servicing, they’re there. To learn more about The Urban Foresters, please visit www.theurbanforesters.com.