Having a HUGE old tree taken down...

Take my advice with a grain of salt -- my area doesn't have many trees. But I would probably go ahead and take it all down.

1. If it's not healthy, it's only a matter of time when you will have to take it down.
2. Cost. Spend the money once and not have to worry about it again.
3. Peace of mind is valuable and if you are laying awake worrying, then its costing you your peace.

In most places it falling on a neighbor’s house won’t have any financial impact on you. The only thing that you are responsible for is the guilt. Unless you know the tree is dead or dying. Our neighbor’s tree fell on our house ripping down the brand new gutters and taking down a good hunk of fence. Neighbor replace our shared fence, but they didn’t have to.  Gutters were on us and our insurance . Fortunately our roof was fine and no one was hurt.

I would get it taken down. I like the idea of leaving enough to be a habitat. We have a large tree we are taking down because I worry about being crushed while sleeping. I wish we could make our neighbors take their 2 large trees down, because even though a large branch did damage to our house they won’t. Tree is in good health, just huge. Branch fell off when it wasn’t even stormy. Worries me every time there is an actual storm.

So far the peas are in agreement, which doesn't happen very often.  Take down the tree, spend the money on being proactive and then you can sleep in peace.

I would (& have in the past) taken down trees in a similar situation.  Didn't take down another tree as I thought that it was far away enough from the house.  Hah! Not so much.  A storm took this tree down and missed the house by mere inches!  The cost to repair and (of course) increase in cost of home insurance would have been $$$.

You might even get a bit of reduction in your home owners insurance if you can prove that you mitigated a factor that could have resulted in a lot of damage.  Try this & see what happens.

Definitely take the tree down. I would do stump and all. I'm not fond of looking at a half tree. lol Very expensive, but you'll be glad you did. Plant another one in its place.

Another vote for take the tree completely down. If you leave it at 30' you still have the issue lurking during storms. A 30' tree can do just as much damage to property as a larger one. Plant some new tree(s) that will provide habitat for the animals and birds.

We had an enormous red oak tree taken down about 15 years go. It has issues in the trunk and we spent a lot of money and several years trying to save it. I loved that tree and still mourn it. It was 100+ years old and 100'+ tall and it took them 2 full days to take it down. A couple of years after that Hurricane Ike came through with 100 mph winds in my area. As I rode it out alone, I was so thankful that we'd made the decision to take it down. Our only regret is that we didn't remove it sooner and not spend the money we did trying to save it.

I love trees. Just love everything about them and the homes they provide to birds and squirrels. But I would also love my home and peace of mind, not spending time worrying about whether this tree was going to fall and damage property and possibly injure or kill someone. You can always plant smaller trees to provide shade and new homes for birds.

I’m trying to picture the scenario where you top the tree and leave 30 ft of it. Is there greenery that will remain on that 30 ft piece? I’m picturing just a tall wide trunk with little to no greenery, which is going to kill the tree anyway and eventually that trunk will rot and possibly fall anyway.

So as much as I hate the idea, I would have it fully removed. And I would ask them to put the large limbs and trunk through the wood chipper separately from the leaves onsite to give me the wood chips for mulch.

We've had to remove several trees on our property & it's always a hard decision. We recently took one down in our front yard and had it cut down to leave about a 6ft stump. My husband did a chainsaw tree carving on it and carved all the critters we have in our neighborhood on the stump (squirrel, racoon, fox & a hawk on the top). He does chainsaw carvings as his job so I was lucky enough to get a beautiful piece of art done! We have a lot of walkers in our neighborhood and so many people will stop and look at it and the neighborhood kids love seeing the critters on the tree. Just wanted to give you another idea where you could save part of the tree and turn it into art for your backyard.

We are in the process of taking one big old maple down right now. It has dead branches, it's splitting at the base, has bark issues, & ants. The arborist told us maples to to showcase issues on the outside only after there is significant damage inside, so it's likely worse than it even looks.  

It's been dropping chunks of branches all year. AND, 3 other maples, planted in a line with this one at the same time, have already died & fallen down on this property before we moved.  I love the tree, and I feel badly about losing the last one.  But 2 of the other 3 trees did graze the house when they fell.  So it's definitely a ticking time bomb type of situation. Some of the branches overhand our porch, and we're about to have work done on the porch, so we want the tree down first. In our situation, the entire tree has to come down.

We have a partially wooded yard, so we have plenty of other areas available for birds & animals.  So that is not really a consideration.
We have several other dead/dying trees on the property, including another dying maple. We're trying to take down the trees in order of which is most likely to hit a structure. Then, when they've come down, we'll be planting new trees---albeit not in all of the exact same places.  So we will be eventually bringing the tree count back up to what it was before these batch of trees all started running into issues.

I would have it all removed and plant something new.

I love trees but not half-dead ones waiting to fall on my house!

My friend just had their tree crash into their house after a big storm. They are now in a rental and most of their stuff is damaged beyond fixing. It's a huge mess. Of course, nothing is going right and their household stuff sat in the house almost six weeks before it was taken away by the restoration company.

I would take down.

I would add that a tree can fall down even if there isn’t a storm or high winds.

My neighbor’s huge tree of 2 feet across diameter and 75 feet high fell onto our yard and there was no wind. There was no damage or rotten area that we ever saw on the outside. Our flag on the flag pole was completely flat. My husband was mowing away from tree, the tree fell, and the tree branches on top of the tree completely engulfed my husband and the Scag zero turn radius lawn ride-on mower. Luckily he wasn’t injured, just some scratches and a cut on the inside of his lip where his face hit the steering wheel from the weight of the branches hitting him.

If he had been 3-4 seconds later in mowing that row, he would probably be dead or seriously injured. I was out back weeding, heard a loud crack, and I looked up in time to see the entire tree heading towards my husband. The tree didn’t snap at first, the entire root ball came out of the ground. About half-way down, the tree snapped at the trunk about 12 feet up the trunk. That was the snap sound I heard. The tree trunk was in the same row that he had just mowed. It turned out the trunk was hollow from the ground to about 20 feet up. The tree trunk was solid from that point up. It was a beautiful red maple tree. No dead or dying branches.

I was 55 years old at the time and that was the fastest I have ever run in my entire life.

My heart is racing just typing this.

I do know that part of the cost to cut down a tree depends on whether there are power lines around, how much “space” is around the tree, whether you have the stump ground out. Just make sure the company is bonded.

ETA: I don’t blame my then 95 year old neighbor for this, but her two sons (one who lives a mile away) said they would have a company come out “right away”. Their insurance guy was out the next day and took pictures. Two weeks later, no one arrived to cut up the branches and trunk. In the meantime, our driveway to the barn is completely blocked. My husband can’t drive his truck in and out of the barn (it won’t fit in the garage—F-250 truck 🛻). My husband finally called the sons and asked when it was going to be cut. They said “Oh since the tree is down, we thought it was no rush”. My husband said, “No it needs to be done as my driveway is blocked. If it isn’t cut and stacked in 2 days, I will hire someone and send you the bill.”. Then the older son said. “Oh I’ll just come and cut it myself.” My husband said “Not in my property you won’t because if you get hurt, then my homeowner’s insurance comes into play.”. I think they wanted to pocket the fee for themselves and cut it themselves. They were a bit huffy when they were out with the tree company. We still had to rake up afterwards and also buy some topsoil to fill in the dents in the yard, but 🤷‍♀️.

We have to have a huge oak tree taken down. I love this tree-it is so pretty and provides the only shade in my yard. But the trunk has split. By the time it was visible to us-it was already split internally so we cannot save it.

It is over a power line and needs to be removed by a crane. It will cost close to $7,000 but it needs to be done: I am so sad for the critters that live in it, and the loss of shade it provides.