Really starting to hate trees!

[Brian Elfert]

I wasn't surprised by the $5,000 quote on my cottonwood tree. The trunk is 4 or 5 feet in diameter. I haven't gotten any other quotes on removing it. It probably wouldn't hurt anything if it falls, but it should be removed some day. I paid $1500 to have a large limb removed that had broken off and gotten tangled in other trees.

[David Epperson]

I think we spent around $600 to rent a 45' Geni-Boom bucket lift for one weekend, and dropped 4 pines 6 Red Oaks and a very large Bradford Pear. And also trimmed up about 6 other trees. Then we spent about 0.25 per bd/ft and had almost all of it turned into lumber with a portable band sawmill. We called in all sorts of family to help, but it went pretty smoothly. The Bradford pear was the largest though, at "only" 32 inches in diameter at the base and only 85' tall.

[Bruce Page]

5K is outrageous. I had a 35 year old Limber Pine tree ~ 2.5’ diameter base X ~40’ tall removed in March for $700 including stump grinding and cleanup.

[Brian Elfert]

I really think DIY is beyond my abilities on this tree without more tree cutting experience. I also don't have a large enough chain saw, but I guess I could rent one. Some of the branches are huge and would be hard to get to the ground. I rented a small boom lift once to pressure wash my house and was going to trim some trees with it too and my dad highly recommended against it.

I will get some more quotes on taking the tree down before I move forward with removing it. It won't be this year unless it becomes an emergency.

[Jim Becker]

Safety first, Brian...let the pros take down a large tree like that. You can always have them leave it in large chunks and do the breakdown yourself to save some money. That's what I did a few years ago when I had a number trees taken down along the road. They used their boom to cut them off and lay them down and I dealt with the aftermath. I had them grind up the smaller stuff to eliminate that portion of the cleanup. Definitely get multiple quotes, too...