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Trees are a beautiful addition to any home. They provide privacy, give the air wonderful oxygen, and look stunning as the leaves begin to change, but they can also be dangerous.
If you have trees to close to your home, or to the street, you need to make sure they’re not going to cause damage, should a storm pass through.
Regardless of if you’re more likely to be impacted by a tropical storm or a winter storm, a limb could fall onto your home, crash into a car, or worse — a person.
Here are some ways to make sure that the trees near your home aren’t a hazard to your personal property or to anyone else’s.
A few times a year, make sure to analyze the trees in and around your yard to see if they’re in any danger of falling over.
The easiest way to see if a tree may be on its way down is to see if it’s leaning extremely one way or another.
If you do see a tree that is leaning heavily to the right or heavily to the left, it may be time to call a landscaper who can help you trim the tree in order to distribute the weight more evenly.
The tree also may need to be pulled down on one side by cables.
If a tree is v-shaped or has multiple trunks, it usually means it has more weak points and is more likely to fall in a storm.
These points are also more likely to buckle under heavy snowfall, so it’s important that the tree be stabilized. An arborist, or a tree surgeon, can usually help these trees by connecting branches together with cables.
If a tree has deadwood, which looks very soft, it may be on its way down. Another way to check for deadwood is to see if there’s bark around the base of the tree or bare spots on branches where the bark hasn’t grown back.
Also, if a tree has discolored leaves, it probably means the tree is dying. If it’s just one branch, you may be able to save the tree.
However, if a lot of branches are infected the whole tree more than likely has to come down.
If you have very tall trees that have branches that hang over your home, you need to make sure to cut them back.
A branch could easily break off during a storm and cause serious damage to your roof or other parts of your home, so don’t put this off.
It’s wonderful to have nice, big trees, but you definitely want to avoid paying for a new roof.
