Neighbor's disintegrating tree

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thank you for this advice. I was going to do this, sharing my photos and correspondence if the tree fell on my lot/home. I'll try proactive contact w my insurance now. I want to avoid the danger and damage of the tree actually falling.

I think contacting your insurance when you don't actually have a problem just gives them the pretext to raise your rates.

But, you do you.

[Anonymous]

Have a conversation with the neighbor first. JFC with people in this area.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ugh. You sound like my neighbor. Who cut down their healthy trees, which weakend everyone else's trees. And that's ok because my arborist gave my trees extra nutrients and lightened the crown. But then they called the county and tried to get my trees cut down. And I had to spend $2000 to get a certified letter from my arborist saying my trees are healthy and do not need to be cut down. Don't be my neighbor.

The tree in question is not healthy.

Are you a certified Arborist or have a degree in Forestry?

Are you?

No, but I have enough sense to know that they know and understand tress and the their lifecycle/issues better than either of us.

They know and understand better that a tree is dead. Okay.

OP said specifically "disintegrating" not "dead".

[Anonymous]

I mean, it sounds like OP should call out an arborist to look at the tree before getting the insurance company involved. But I wouldn’t just ignore it and hope for the best. Our neighbor’s tree had a fair amount of dead branches, including overhanging our yard, so we hired someone to trim on our side and inspect the tree. The arborist said the tree overall was fine, which gave us sone peace of mind. If it were ever to fall it would probably come in our direction (which I think is why neighbor couldn’t be bothered to get it checked out themselves ) and it’s a really large tree.

We did this after a tree in the right of way uprooted and crashed into a house on another street during a storm. The county had been called multiple times because it looked pretty dead, one of the county arborists concurred it was a hazard but then apparently changed jobs and the information didn’t get passed on. It was scary, thankfully the family was out at the time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ugh. You sound like my neighbor. Who cut down their healthy trees, which weakend everyone else's trees. And that's ok because my arborist gave my trees extra nutrients and lightened the crown. But then they called the county and tried to get my trees cut down. And I had to spend $2000 to get a certified letter from my arborist saying my trees are healthy and do not need to be cut down. Don't be my neighbor.

The tree in question is not healthy.

Are you a certified Arborist or have a degree in Forestry?

"arge oak tree rotting (obvious cracks at bottom and going up, hollow). Has been deteriorating for years. Now it's bad."

I'm simply contrasting PP who is adding an unrelated anecdote about a neighbor cutting down all of their healthy trees (which we can agree is a very dumb and destabilizing thing to do).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ugh. You sound like my neighbor. Who cut down their healthy trees, which weakend everyone else's trees. And that's ok because my arborist gave my trees extra nutrients and lightened the crown. But then they called the county and tried to get my trees cut down. And I had to spend $2000 to get a certified letter from my arborist saying my trees are healthy and do not need to be cut down. Don't be my neighbor.

The tree in question is not healthy.

Are you a certified Arborist or have a degree in Forestry?

"arge oak tree rotting (obvious cracks at bottom and going up, hollow). Has been deteriorating for years. Now it's bad."

I'm simply contrasting PP who is adding an unrelated anecdote about a neighbor cutting down all of their healthy trees (which we can agree is a very dumb and destabilizing thing to do).

Just because there are cracks in a tree, it doesn't mean it's dead and needs to be cut down

[Anonymous]

OP here. I did not pay my tree expert to do a report on this tree. He commented to me. You can see it is hollow because the base is so cracked. You can see inside an old branch hole halfway up that it is hollow. Birds go inside. But large old oak trees can stand until one day they suddenly dont. As a PP noted.
I and the hoa have emailed and written to owner. As a PP said, some have no intention to maintain trees. Bad humans don't care about their inaction harming others.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ugh. You sound like my neighbor. Who cut down their healthy trees, which weakend everyone else's trees. And that's ok because my arborist gave my trees extra nutrients and lightened the crown. But then they called the county and tried to get my trees cut down. And I had to spend $2000 to get a certified letter from my arborist saying my trees are healthy and do not need to be cut down. Don't be my neighbor.

The tree in question is not healthy.

Are you a certified Arborist or have a degree in Forestry?

"arge oak tree rotting (obvious cracks at bottom and going up, hollow). Has been deteriorating for years. Now it's bad."

I'm simply contrasting PP who is adding an unrelated anecdote about a neighbor cutting down all of their healthy trees (which we can agree is a very dumb and destabilizing thing to do).

Just because there are cracks in a tree, it doesn't mean it's dead and needs to be cut down

And maybe it does mean that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. I did not pay my tree expert to do a report on this tree. He commented to me. You can see it is hollow because the base is so cracked. You can see inside an old branch hole halfway up that it is hollow. Birds go inside. But large old oak trees can stand until one day they suddenly dont. As a PP noted.
I and the hoa have emailed and written to owner. As a PP said, some have no intention to maintain trees. Bad humans don't care about their inaction harming others.

Actually I think it helps in this case that you have an HOA!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. I did not pay my tree expert to do a report on this tree. He commented to me. You can see it is hollow because the base is so cracked. You can see inside an old branch hole halfway up that it is hollow. Birds go inside. But large old oak trees can stand until one day they suddenly dont. As a PP noted.
I and the hoa have emailed and written to owner. As a PP said, some have no intention to maintain trees. Bad humans don't care about their inaction harming others.

But if you did all of this without giving a heads up to your neighbor before then YATA

Again, my neighbor did this to me and my healthy tree and it cost me a lot of money to prove my tree was healthy so I could keep it. If he had spoken to me about it like a normal human (like a good neighbor), I could have explained it to him and had my arborist talk to him. Instead, I had to go through a Kafka-esque official process to disprove the false assumption that the tree had to be cut down. Be a decent person and try to talk to your neighbor first.

[Anonymous]

Post pictures, please. lol. But really, you have a HOA. Put it on them with whatever evidence that you have.

[Anonymous]

I too would punt this to the HOA.

Some of our neighbors are crazy and you shouldn't be talking to them. You're NTA for worrying about a known issue. My neighbors let a massive tree of heaven grow on our property line (on their side though). They then got upset when we asked them if we could have it removed. They went berserk on us. We got the county involved and the county forced them to pay to remove it. We had a laugh about that one because we were offering to remove it for them. We STILL get spikes growing from the roots of that sh!tty tree.