Branches Touching the Roof
Limbs rubbing shingles lift flashing, hold moisture against the roof, and give squirrels and raccoons a bridge into the attic.
Pruning done to ISA standards — not just tidied up. We improve the health and structure of your trees, clear your roof and service lines, and cut in a way the tree can actually recover from.
Overview
Much of the tree damage we get called out to fix started with bad pruning. Stubbed branches that could not seal, a canopy thinned so hard the tree threw up weak water sprouts, or a topping cut that left three competing leaders where there used to be one. Pruning is the cheapest tree work you will ever buy and the easiest to get wrong.
Our arborists prune to ISA standards: cuts at the branch collar so the wound can close, no more live canopy removed than the tree can afford in one season, and structural decisions made for where the tree is going rather than how it looks this week. That is what keeps a mature maple sound for another twenty years instead of turning it into a removal quote in five.
When to Call
If any of these describe your property, it is worth having a certified arborist take a look before the situation gets more expensive.
Limbs rubbing shingles lift flashing, hold moisture against the roof, and give squirrels and raccoons a bridge into the attic.
Brown, brittle, or bark-free branches in an otherwise leafy crown are the classic “widow makers” — they fall without warning.
Branches growing into the drop line to your house are both an outage risk and a fire risk, and they need clearance pruning.
Long horizontal limbs carrying all their weight at the tip are the first thing to break under wet snow or ice.
A co-dominant union with included bark is a structural weak point. Reduction pruning now can prevent losing half the tree later.
A crown with no light or air movement through it holds disease and catches wind like a sail.
Our Process
No guesswork and no surprise invoices. Here is exactly what happens from the moment you call to the moment we leave the site clean.
We visit, look at the tree, and quote the pruning in writing — including what we recommend leaving alone, and why.
Our arborist sets the objective: clearance, deadwood, structure, or reduction. Every cut on the job serves that objective.
We climb or use a lift rather than spiking mature trees, and we make proper collar cuts. Nothing is topped.
Brush is chipped and hauled, the lawn is raked and blown clean, and we walk the finished canopy with you.
Storm damage, fallen trees, dangerous limbs — call us anytime, day or night.
FAQ
Late winter through very early spring — roughly February into March — is ideal for most hardwoods here. The tree is dormant, the structure is easy to read with no leaves in the way, and wounds seal quickly once growth starts. Dead, broken, or clearly hazardous limbs are the exception: those come out whenever we find them, in any season.
As a rule we stay well under a quarter of the live canopy in a single season, and considerably less than that on older or stressed trees. Removing more than a tree can afford forces it to spend stored energy regrowing foliage, and it often triggers weak, upright water sprouts.
Trimming and pruning remove selected branches at proper cut points to leave a sound structure. Topping cuts the top off a tree at an arbitrary height. Topping is not a service we offer — it removes the tree’s ability to feed itself, leaves large wounds that cannot seal, and grows back as a cluster of weakly attached shoots that are more dangerous than what was there before.
Generally you may prune branches that extend over your property line, but the specifics vary, and the tree itself belongs to whoever owns the ground the trunk stands on. We will tell you what we see on site, and we always recommend talking to your neighbour before we start — most of these jobs go smoothly when both parties know the plan.
Sometimes. If the tree is fundamentally sound and simply carrying deadwood or over-extended limbs, pruning solves it. If limbs are failing because of internal decay or root problems, pruning only treats the symptom — our arborist will tell you honestly which situation you are in.
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