In early June, we had a thunderstorm come through packing a fair amount of wind. It cleaned up a lot of marginal tree tops around here... There was the tree that got killed by lightning about eight years ago. There was the tree that got killed by beetles about six years ago. Then there was the tree that never was killed, but which was just a wimpy little cheesecake.
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| Lightning Killed Tree, Top on Ground |
Then there was the tree that never was killed, but which was just a wimpy little cheesecake. Unfortunately, my irrigation pump was nearby. Fortunately, it had what I thought at the time I bought it was a kind of overbuilt, more or less useless, way too beefy steel top. Unfortunately, it wasn't quite beefy enough.
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| Oopies... Irrigation Pump |
The top of the tree came down and crushed a piece of aluminum pipe I had left nearby. It also crushed the aluminum part of the suction line (the intake) to the pump. At least that was better than landing on the PVC, which it would have shattered. I think I will be able to unbend the dent using a car jack and a piece of 2 x 8 cut into a half-round form.
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| Crushed Pipe | Crushed Suction Line |
I took the tractor down and tried to lift the tree off. However, I didn't have my one ton concrete block on the back of the tractor to counterbalance it, and all that happened when I went to pick up the tree was the back end of the tractor started to lift off the ground. Since the ground was uneven and the tractor was at an angle, it started tipping over... I decided it was probably prudent to go get the chainsaw and deal with the tree a piece at a time. Cottonwoods are really full of water, or pitch, which is not exactly light... I decided I really was glad the pump came with a cage.
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| Thanks for the cage! | Better... |
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| Suction line with tree removed |
The tree top shattered when the top hit the ground, and as the rest of it came down it broke over the pump cage. It bent the cage down to within an inch of the pump itself, but as nearly as I can tell it didn't touch the pump. Whew! I am going to try to straighten it out with a hydraulic jack. ...If I have one big enough.
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| Time for the jack... | Under the hood |
You can see the bottom part of the tree still standing behind the pump in the picture below. I never worried about that tree; I figured when it died it would fall into the river, the other way...
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| Pump, suction line, and snag |
This page last updated on 2013-10-23.
