Tree cabling and bracing is how you keep a structurally suspect tree that is otherwise healthy and worth keeping, once tree trimming alone will not do it. A cable is a flexible support fitted high in the crown between two limbs or two stems; a brace is a rigid rod through a union that is already moving. Cabling and bracing limits movement, it does not repair the union.
Neither is a repair. Tree cabling and bracing limits how far a weak point can travel, nothing more. We fit it in Paris on the trees where it makes sense, and say so plainly on the trees where it does not. Ring (226) 546-3814.
Where a branch joins its parent properly, the wood knits across the junction year on year and the joint is stronger than the branch.
Where two stems of similar size grow up pressed together, they do not knit. The bark on their facing sides gets rolled inward instead, and you end up with a union that is bark all the way down the middle with no wood connecting the two halves. That is an included union, and it is the single most common reason a large tree splits.
You can usually see it: a tight V rather than an open U at the fork, often with a seam or a ridge of bark running down from it. On the silver maples along the Nith and the Grand, with three stems out of the same point at head height, assume it until somebody has looked properly.
The tree is worth keeping — mature, healthy, providing real shade, and not replaceable in a hurry. Around Paris that usually means a maple or an oak somebody's grandparents planted.
The fault is a union or a long heavy limb, not decay at the base. Cabling does nothing for a rotten butt.
The wood either side of the union is sound. A cable anchored into decayed wood tears out and takes a slab of the tree with it.
There is something underneath worth protecting. Tree cabling and bracing on a tree in the middle of a field is rarely worth the money; on one over a house it is.
If the union has already split significantly, cabling on its own is usually too late. Sometimes a brace through the union plus a cable above it will hold it, and sometimes the honest answer is tree removal.
If the base is decayed, no support system in the crown helps.
If the tree is a dead or dying ash, it is not a candidate. The wood will not hold an anchor.
And if the only reason to keep it is that removal seems expensive, do the arithmetic properly: cabling is not a one-off. It has to be inspected periodically and it does not last forever.
Tree cabling and bracing goes roughly two-thirds of the way up from the union to the ends of the limbs it is joining — high enough to have leverage, low enough to be in sound wood. Fitted too low it does nothing; fitted too high it sits in wood too small to hold it.
Bracing rods go through the union itself, and in tree cabling and bracing their job is to stop the two halves moving apart while the cable above limits how far the tops can travel. On a badly included union you want both.
Then it gets looked at again. Hardware wears, trees grow around it, and a support system nobody has inspected in fifteen years is not a support system. We are in the County of Brant every week, so coming back to check one is not a special trip. That is part of what you are buying, and we will say when we want to see it next.
If you have a big multi-stemmed tree near the house and you have never had anybody up it, that is the tree cabling and bracing candidate to ring about. Ring (226) 546-3814 for a look and a written recommendation — including, where it applies, a recommendation not to bother. The home page covers the rest of what we do.
Very few jobs stop at one of these. Here is everything else we do.
Tree trimming and pruning is most of what we do in Paris, and most tree trimming is not about making a tree smaller. It is about taking weight off the wrong places, getting the dead material out, and cutting so the tree can seal what we cut.
View Tree Trimming and Pruning
Dead branch removal is the tree trimming job people put off longest, and the one that gives least warning. A dead limb does not creak, lean or drop leaves to tell you it is going. It stays exactly where it is until the day it does not, which is why dead branch removal gets booked after the fact rather than before.
View Dead Branch Removal
Emergency storm damage cleanup is the call that comes at five in the morning, and it is the one part of tree trimming nobody plans for. A tree across the drive, a limb through the garage roof, a trunk resting on the car, or a branch left hanging over the front door with nothing holding it. Storm damage cleanup is answered outside working hours.
View Emergency Storm Damage Cleanup
Tree removal is the last option on the list, not the first, and we would rather talk you out of a tree removal than sell you one you did not need. But a dead, split, badly leaning or structurally finished tree beside a house is past what tree trimming can fix, and pretending otherwise costs more in the end.
View Tree Removal
Crown thinning and canopy reduction are the two kinds of tree trimming that make a large tree less of a liability without taking it out. Thinning takes density out of the crown; canopy reduction takes size off the outside of it. They solve different problems, they are constantly confused, and neither one is topping.
View Crown Thinning and Canopy Reduction
Stump grinding and removal is the tree trimming job that turns a felled tree back into usable garden. A grinder takes the stump down below ground level in chips, so the area can be levelled, turfed, planted or paved. Stump grinding is quoted separately from taking the tree down.
View Stump Grinding and RemovalDescribe the tree and what is under it. Somebody attends, looks at the whole property, and returns a written scope with the debris and the exclusions spelled out.
The more you can tell us about the tree and the access, the more the first visit achieves. Only a way of reaching you is required. Would you sooner speak to someone? The number is (226) 546-3814.
