Keeping a SOUND ROOF

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Frequently blow downs of old, weak or rotten trees involve broken trunks or the splitting off of a major limb. The latter can deliver quite a blow if the break is clean, the tree close enough to the house and if the limb falls from a good height and hits the roof with full momentum.

When, on the other hand, a living tree is uprooted by a high wind gust, it gives up its grip in the soil with great reluctance. Most of its major upwind roots are ripped out or broken, causing it to hinge over on its unbroken, downwind roots - all of which tends to reduce its momentum and break its fall.

Note, too, that a tree growing a distance from the home that is greater than the height of its trunk will strike with its limber branches only. Sheet-metal gutters, downspouts and window glass may be broken, shutters torn off and siding scarred, but little structural damage will result.

If, however, a tree is planted close enough that the heavy trunk does hit the building, all is not necessarily lost; it may be so close that its arc of fall will be insufficient to generate the momentum needed to cause substantial damage. So it was with one of our blow downs. We walked outside to find the tree - a young sugar maple that had been growing less than ten feet from the house - casually leaning, it seemed, against the roof. It must have struck with a negligible force that was absorbed largely by its branches. Not one of us had been awakened by the impact.

A TREE OFF THE ROOF

If a reasonably sized tree, all but the downwind quarter of its root system ripped from the soil, is just leaning against the house, you can take a tip from homeowners in south Florida, where hurricanes are an annual event. Try to replant it.

Before you start working under the tree, be sure it is firmly lodged in place against the house. Toss a loop of rope around the trunk, a limb or root. Move away a safe distance and yank on the rope hard enough from several directions to make the tree wobble. If it wants to fall, encourage it do so when nobody is under it. If a fall would increase damage to house or plantings, guy it in place with ropes at each side leading to stout stakes. If in any doubt at all about safety, call in a team of professional arborists.

Fix three 100' ropes as high up on the trunk as you can get with a ladder, or tie them on while working from a window or the roof. (I like to back in my pickup truck parallel to the house, with the rear bumper practically touching the tree, and raise the ladder from the end of the bed; the feet. of the ladder rest snugly in the junctions of the bed floor, the side and the end gate. Plus, the bed gives me a few extra feet of height at the bottom of the ladder.)

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