cabling?

[pantheraba]

A friend asked me to look at a tree for him. To my (untrained) eye, it appears healthy; but he is concerned about the crotch and eventual failure. His neighbor across the street just had a very large oak crash onto her house (a neighbor's dead tree, root ball turned loose in our recent heavy rains) and that has him looking at his trees more closely.

Is this tree a candidate for cabling? I have directed him to contact an arborist (only 2 local companies list arborists in their ads) for a professional opinion and recommendation.

Do these two pictures show enough for you to make suggestions?

Thanks.

 

[pantheraba]

Here is a zoom of the two leads:

 

[Tom Dunlap]

If this were a test question this is where a cable would be installed. There are other considerations though. Is the client willing to take on the risk? Do they understand that the tree has already started to fail, all that cables are supposed to do is support?

There are more trees still standing that were cabled than ones that weren't. In my experience, even a bad cabling job will hold most trees. Doing it right is the best though, of course.