Tree work on North Braddock’s steepest streets

A borough built on a slope, and trees that know it

Everything about tree work in this borough comes back to the hill. North Braddock got laid out for mill families who walked down to Edgar Thomson and back up again at the end of a turn, so the streets went in wherever the hillside allowed and the houses went in tight against them. Some of these blocks are as steep as anything in the county. Stand at the bottom of one and the roofline of the house four doors up is level with the second-floor window of the house beside you. That geometry is the whole job. A leaning silver maple on flat ground drops where the lean says it will. The same tree on a twenty percent grade wants to run downhill, and downhill is somebody’s kitchen.

So we rig here more than we fell. The climber ties in high, takes the tree down in short pieces, and every piece comes off on a line to a groundman standing where the slope actually lets him stand. Nothing gets dropped and hoped for. When the only place to set up is the uphill side and the tree is leaning the other way, that is what pulling lines and, on the bigger ones, crane support are for. It is slower than an open backyard in the suburbs. It is also the difference between a job that ends with a stump and a job that ends with a claim.

Volunteer trees on the property line

Here is the North Braddock call we take most. You have lived in your house for thirty or forty years, kept it up, and the ground on one side of you has been open for a long stretch. Nature does not leave open ground alone. Tree of heaven, mulberry and box elder move into empty lots and old foundations fast, and they have had decades of nobody stopping them. Now there is a stand of them right on your line, twenty and thirty feet up, roots working into a foundation wall that predates them by a century, seedlings coming up through your own hedge every spring.

None of that is a comment on the neighborhood. It is what those three species do anywhere they get a chance, and they got a lot of chances here. What matters is that they are genuinely bad wood. Tree of heaven in particular grows fast, gets tall, and then sheds heavy limbs in the first real wind because it never built the structure to hold them. So we take them off the line, grind what needs grinding, and treat the resprouting properly instead of just cutting the tops and letting you fight it again in two years. On the empty parcels themselves, the lot clearing side of the truck handles the whole stand at once, which is usually the cheaper way through when a few neighbors are dealing with the same thicket.

Retaining walls, and why we ask about them first

Half the flat ground in this borough is flat because somebody built a wall to make it flat. Stone and block retaining walls hold up yards, driveways, sidewalks and in a few places most of a street, and a lot of them have been doing it since the mill was hiring. When a tree grows on top of one, or right at its foot, the wall becomes part of the tree job whether anybody planned for it or not.

We look at that before we quote, not after. Roots inside an old wall are often the only thing still holding the courses together, which means yanking the stump out can take the wall with it. In those spots we grind instead of excavate, and we grind carefully, back from the face. Equipment weight matters too. A machine parked on the fill behind an old wall is putting load exactly where the wall is weakest, so sometimes we work off the street and hand-carry, which takes longer and is the right call anyway. If your wall is already bulging, we will say so plainly and tell you to get a mason on it before we touch the tree above it. Nobody wants a tree bill that turns into a wall bill.

One-way streets, storms, and getting the road open

When a line of storms comes across the valley, the calls out of here have a pattern. A hillside tree comes over and lands across a narrow one-way street, and now an entire block cannot get a car out. Those go to the front of the list. Call (412) 526-2028 any hour of the night. We cut the road open first, make the hanging pieces safe second, photograph everything for insurance while it is still where it fell, and schedule the rest of the cleanup around your week rather than ours. If the tree that failed had been finished for a while, and after a windstorm we can usually tell, we will say so and talk through removal of what is left standing rather than leaving you to do this again in September.

The other thing about working a borough this tight: the truck has to fit. Narrow streets, cars parked both sides, alleys that stop being alleys halfway along, and a grade that decides where a chipper can safely sit. We scout it on the walk-around and plan the setup then, so on the day of the job we are not blocking your neighbors any longer than the work actually takes. That is standard for us across Allegheny County, and it matters more here than most places.

Straight answers, up front

People in this borough have been given the runaround by contractors before, and it shows in how careful the first phone call usually is. Fair enough. So here is how we run it. Chris comes out and walks the property with you. He tells you what has to come down, what only needs a prune, and what is fine and should be left alone, because plenty of trees people are worried about are healthy. You get the number up front, in writing, before anyone starts. The crew shows up when we said, does the whole job in one visit including the cleanup, and the wood goes with us unless you want it cut for the stove. One and done. In sawdust we trust.