Losing our big tree...

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tRidiot

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Had an 8" limb drop on the house Sunday morning. Looked to be a previously-healthy limb, but the storm that came through proved that wrong. Roof looks good, ended up with nothing but a bent gutter. Dropped right on top of my 10 year-old son's bedroom.

Had the tree looked at by a guy from OSU Extension Office last summer, he told us it has oak mold and we are going to lose it - in 1-2 years, or could go 5 years, no way to tell. We paid about $600 to have a friend of a friend who has a trimming service clean out all the dead stuff last year, but it progressing faster now with this wet summer we've had - the mold is spreading like wildfire. Looks like it's gonna run about $2k to haul it out. It's about 3 feet across at the base, sits 15 feet in front of the house and is a good 50-60 feet tall, I'd guess. It provides a ton of shade on our house in the afternoons from the west side, so we're gonna lose all that help with our cooling bills, too, not to mention totally changing the entire character of the house and the curb appeal. :(

We picked this house when we bought in large part because of the older neighborhood and the character provided by all the big old oaks in the neighborhood. Mature growth and variety of the yards and landscape makes it a really pretty area to live in. And now we're going to lose a big part of our home's contribution to that. It's the only tree in our front yard and the last remaining "big" tree on our property - we removed a big one from the back about 4 years back to open the yard to more sun and help promote a better lawn and aesthetics, as half our back yard was in perpetual dense shade. After 2 or 3 attempts at sod and several more at various types of seeding, our yard has thickened, but there's still a big bare patch in the back we're trying to get the bermuda to spread into and it's still bare dirt - but it's getting smaller each year. Now all the fescue in the front lawn is going to die when this tree is gone and we'll have an even bigger patch to try to seed/sod with something to fill it in with.

<sigh> Always seems to be something... looking like we may have to cancel the family cruise we were trying to plan over Thanksgiving to pay for it. :( But we can't risk the big tree falling on the house this fall or winter... insurance guy says it wouldn't be covered, because we have knowledge the tree is dead or dying and know it's a hazard, so it would be failure to remove the hazard and thus not covered.
 

HiredHand

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Sorry, to hear about the tree. I think there are some fescue varieties that tolerate full sun, they might go dormant in the summer if you don't irrigate them.
 

briarcreekguy

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Sad to hear about the loss of your tree. I think that a lot of people do not realize how much the shade of a big tree affects your cooling costs. I lived in one house for 18 years and it had a couple of seedless mulberries on the west side. They were small when I moved in but matured nicely, I saw a dramatic drop in my cooling bill as the shade got better each year. The next owners came in and cut them down, I bet they were surprised when their electric bill came. Unfortunately all the trees that I know of that mature quickly, seem to be softer woods that drop lots of limbs when the Oklahoma winds blow. Maybe someone on here can recommend a tree that grows fast but yet is strong enough to endure the gusting winds.
 

HiredHand

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Sad to hear about the loss of your tree. I think that a lot of people do not realize how much the shade of a big tree affects your cooling costs. I lived in one house for 18 years and it had a couple of seedless mulberries on the west side. They were small when I moved in but matured nicely, I saw a dramatic drop in my cooling bill as the shade got better each year. The next owners came in and cut them down, I bet they were surprised when their electric bill came. Unfortunately all the trees that I know of that mature quickly, seem to be softer woods that drop lots of limbs when the Oklahoma winds blow. Maybe someone on here can recommend a tree that grows fast but yet is strong enough to endure the gusting winds.

I think regular pruning and maintenance can improve the chances that a tree will survive the types of winds we get here.
 

Poke78

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Unfortunately all the trees that I know of that mature quickly, seem to be softer woods that drop lots of limbs when the Oklahoma winds blow. Maybe someone on here can recommend a tree that grows fast but yet is strong enough to endure the gusting winds.

Here's a good website with Oklahoma proven trees that are recommended by OSU: http://oklahomaproven.okstate.edu/

Here's a good listing by size for the Ardmore area: http://www.forestry.ok.gov/Websites/forestry/Images/Ardmore Tree Selection.pdf

A good friend, now passed on, was an OK tree grower and had several favorites. His list included Chinese pistache, bald cypress, and Schumard oak. Obviously, the oak is the slower growing of this selection. I have a pistache that is doing well but lost a Schumard oak that was planted at the same time. Maybe just a bad one...
 

tRidiot

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$600 sounds cheap!

Cheap for what? I paid $600 last summer to trim it... it's gonna be around $2k to remove. And believe me, that's cheap for this tree. It's gonna be a dangerous job for whomever the damn fool is that agrees to climb up there and take this thing apart from the top down.
 

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