Poly level...any thoughts on tree applications with this.?

climbhightree said:
Ugh, I have a have a couple customers that wanted me to do this...in conjunction with evicting the squirrels by locking the door. Looks like I'll have to tell them it isn't a recommended practice anymore.

Thanks for the info.
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Just for the record the foam isn't recommended. You can still kick those tree rats to the curb.
 
Tom Dunlap said:
Cement didn't work. Don't base 'working' on observed trees that haven't failed. The ones that failed are long gone.

Read in Shigo's books about cavity filling.

Another source is this book:

http://www.thriftbooks.com/w/arbori...qxAIUdeC9Q2CU5J-MqUStAq_aqu8ZQVLFQaAnAb8P8HAQ

Wood rot takes place in moist environs. Not saturated or constantly wet or in dry conditions. Can any foam be elastic enough to flex with the tree and not create a break where moisture can collect?

I'm skeptical.
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Not trying to curb this to far but I've seen lots of things filling cavaties. I totally am on side with cement being a not so good idea.
But on that note I've also seen stacked bricks which may have some air flow between and nothing has to bond or harden were they any better or worse than cement?
As far as that would go with the foam is there a 'tree paint' that they tell us not to use that would be better since it was made as a sealer.
Or do you leave it alone to nature or cover it with something to keep the weather out? I would think freeze thaw, condensation, etc would still produce moisture for rot with no air to dry it.

So what's the best practice for cavities. My avatar is me in a silver maple and the cavity is big enough for me 6'1" 180lbs with spurs on the sit inside cross legged with the back of my belt inside no weight on the rope.
 
Great care should be taken when cleaning a cavity before filling, so as not to break the boundary that separates the decayed wood from the sound wood. A cavity can be filled for cosmetic reasons with any type of materials that will not rub against the living tissues.
-Shigo

If this is the case obviously the open edge is a spot of concern but how much interior wood tissue of the cavity is a concern? As well how do you clean your cavity? just dig it out good enough or ...?

I've done minimal work on cavities no specific job but it is something I've started reading up on and there's always 8 different sides.
 
my apprentice took on this project as an experiment

i explained how it could collapse if he did it all at once. I believe he filled a portion at a time , letting it cure and then filling more of the cavity. How thorough of a job he did during that point I cannot be sure, but I do recall inspecting afterward and it seemed solid filled , and years later it was chewed through. ( silver maple , hotel de squirrel )

I no longer live in that area, otherwise id go look it over again
 
i reviewed the 'drill tree'again ( not same tree as cavity experiment, just to clarify) and the 'bowl' was full of water ( frozen ice )

and there were no apparent drill marks, anywhere on the trunk. I think they must have requested the work and we discussed it, but never went through with it.

once i hear back from her , i will repost
 
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FT,

Are you talking about putting tube drains in cavities to dry them out?

Spend some time reviewing Shigo's writing about that. He was solidly against draining. In one workshop we talked about solutions. He suggested running a hose into the hollows and keeping them filled with water all of the time. Not very practical...but it would keep the cavity saturated rather than damp.
 
no i had never heard of the tube until this thread

I thought we drilled a release in a co dom , but i inspected the tree today and found no drill holes anywhere on the trunk, and it still has the water in it

i suspect they requested and we considered it, possibly even preparing for it, but must have deciding against it. this would explain my thinking we had performed it, and not finding any drill hole today
 
i would think if you filled a hollow tree with water it would wash away the tree in layers and eventually collapse

Tom , we met at a tree fair a little while back in st Louis park. I showed you a handle for the jameson / marvin poles that i designed
 
There's not bark on the inside. Rain water flows off the bark without penetration

If you filled a hollow tree, it would flush out the interior in layers

Wouldn't the wood that was in the wet/dry zone, rot?

Also, wouldn't water need to keep being added , in order to keep the cavity full? This moving water would wash out the inside. the Grand canyon tree
 
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Tom Dunlap said:
...Can any foam be elastic enough to flex with the tree and not create a break where moisture can collect?

I'm skeptical.
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Tom, that brings up an interesting idea for me. Maybe we're going about things wrong.

Anyone else ever purchase a memory foam mattress via the mail? 12" thick, 300 lb cali king sized slab of memory foam arrived in a box not that much larger than a dorm fridge. It was vacuum packed to an amazing extent. A few months ago I was watching a TV show where they ran a memory foam mattress over using a 30,000# rolling vibratory compactor and the mattress rose back to it's original height.

My idea would be to take a chunk of memory foam($5 pillows from the cheapo store come to mind), vacuum pack them, then place the compressed ball in the cavity for it to expand. There would need to be some sort of coating still applied, as the memory foam is open cell and will let water infiltrate, but as long as the volume of memory foam was slightly greater than the volume of cavity, it would maintain at least mild pressure on the filler/cavity interface.
 
familytreeman said:
There's not bark on the inside. Rain water flows off the bark without penetration

If you filled a hollow tree, it would flush out the interior in layers

Wouldn't the wood that was in the wet/dry zone, rot?

Also, wouldn't water need to keep being added , in order to keep the cavity full? This moving water would wash out the inside. the Grand canyon tree
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I agree trees totally submerged won't rot but a cavity even if always kept full of water would still have air exposure at the edges and there would be a wet/ dry border somewhere. I cavity water slowly trickled down through the pours that could change to whole balance of air to wood ratio in the wood itself as well which I assume could lead to rot.
 
SumoClimber said:
Tom, that brings up an interesting idea for me. Maybe we're going about things wrong.

Anyone else ever purchase a memory foam mattress via the mail? 12" thick, 300 lb cali king sized slab of memory foam arrived in a box not that much larger than a dorm fridge. It was vacuum packed to an amazing extent. A few months ago I was watching a TV show where they ran a memory foam mattress over using a 30,000# rolling vibratory compactor and the mattress rose back to it's original height.

My idea would be to take a chunk of memory foam($5 pillows from the cheapo store come to mind), vacuum pack them, then place the compressed ball in the cavity for it to expand. There would need to be some sort of coating still applied, as the memory foam is open cell and will let water infiltrate, but as long as the volume of memory foam was slightly greater than the volume of cavity, it would maintain at least mild pressure on the filler/cavity interface.
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That's some good outside the box thinking, but how would that stand up to weather degradation? Pure weight is different than wet/dry freeze/thaw extremes.
 
after inspecting many dry vs wet hollow cavities , i have come to the conclusion that some trees compartmentalize better than others, and each situation may allow for different size cavities based on the conditions

-When the tree has compartmentalized the cavity properly , it will be dry , petrified heartwood and all

-When there is an ongoing issue, there is wet, punky wood present ( wet tissue not sloughing off inside the cavity, resulting in constant expanding cavity, hollowing out large portions of tree ) the tree keeps trying to compartmentalize around it, as the size of cavity grows

ive seen this extend into the tips of branches, turning even small living twigs into hollow tubes with no interior structure
 
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Y'all making my head spin! Good stuff non the less.

If I see cavities with standing water and an ecosystem of wetland plant and animal species proliferating, I plunge tip/bore cut a drain, proceed to removal of accumulating detritus muck. Sure, might be a short term gain. Has to be better then what was happening me thinks?! Up here we have way solid freezes/expansion of the ice in co-dom cavities with standing water? I think a drain is in order.
 
Tom Dunlap said:
Frash...leave the wetland stay!

I really wonder if freeze/thaw does tree damage. My bet is that there is little since the water pockets allow ice expansion up.
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Really? No doubt...so saturated wood won't rot but damp will, makes sense.


So is tree decay like teeth decay? once it's there it grows, and if you remove the decay it temporarily prevents continued decay so long as the origins of the cause of the decay is also removed?

So how does a cavity form if the standing water pocket prevents rot? It makes me think the pools are not there all the time. We do get lots of rain and warm weather. The worst rotten cavities I have seen are on eastern cotton woods. Massive internal rot.

One of my first jobs was working for a 80year old arborist who started when he was 25. Told me his first duty was to chip/carve out all the decay from cavities then fill with bricks and cement. I since then have cut some of his work down...I have to say, besides a nightmare for the surprise of hitting cement, I've been shocked that some of the cavities closed over and seemed to have mitigated the issue with continuing rot. I will say there are also trees round here with cement that look like the cement is the only thing holding them up as the rot did not stop, it just developed a gap between the cement and wood...May be they did not get all the decay out before cementing? At the time there was solid logic for cementing right?
 
frashdog said:
Really? No doubt...so saturated wood won't rot but damp will, makes sense.


So is tree decay like teeth decay? once it's there it grows, and if you remove the decay it temporarily prevents continued decay so long as the origins of the cause of the decay is also removed?

So how does a cavity form if the standing water pocket prevents rot? It makes me think the pools are not there all the time. We do get lots of rain and warm weather. The worst rotten cavities I have seen are on eastern cotton woods. Massive internal rot.

One of my first jobs was working for a 80year old arborist who started when he was 25. Told me his first duty was to chip/carve out all the decay from cavities then fill with bricks and cement. I since then have cut some of his work down...I have to say, besides a nightmare for the surprise of hitting cement, I've been shocked that some of the cavities closed over and seemed to have mitigated the issue with continuing rot. I will say there are also trees round here with cement that look like the cement is the only thing holding them up as the rot did not stop, it just developed a gap between the cement and wood...May be they did not get all the decay out before cementing? At the time there was solid logic for cementing right?
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Was it the cement or the thorough cleaning that did the majority of the good?
 
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