We had a decent sized branch break off during the wind last night. Looking to see if anyone has used an aborist to assess the health of a tree before and how the experience was.

This is a really large tree where we have been quoted $7k to bring it down. If one if the trunks split it would land near the kids bedroom. We want to keep the tree...but not at the expense of the kids safety and major house damage.

The freeze a few years back combined with the lack of rain this summer has done a number on tree health. A ton of mature trees are dying. We're doing drip lines and mulch on all of our mature trees to do what we can. Depending on how this winter goes I'm guessing we'll lose at least one more.

That being said, arborists are real good about telling you if a tree is diseased, but how stressed it really is and if it's coming down soon, it's a crapshoot. I've had 3 different arborists out over the last 3 months, mainly to get different opinions about just how close they'd be comfortable a pool going near a tree, but also because we have a lot of mature trees in our backyard.

I asked all 3 of them about a certain tree. All 3 said it was established and not going anywhere.

3 weeks later the rain - not the wind - did this.




Sav-A-Tree wants to cut/trim everything.
Fort Worth Arborist is very much "the trees will do what they want to do" and as hands off as possible.
Texas Tree Surgeons was about in the middle. Suggested trimming every few years.

Fort Worth Arborist came out to visit me in FTW today and Justin is great!