Trees Down

On Friday, September 9, 2011, Wright Tree Service cut down our four trees. According to our neighbors, the process was exacting and very professionally done. They put those trees down with precision. In fact, even though they could have, they completely avoided the willow tree smack dab in their way and opted to fell two trees on either side of it. A few of the neighbors have already approached us about the trees. Ryan and I feel that there is plenty to give everyone some for the winter. We are most excited about being able to help some others who burn exclusively and have been hit hard by the times. Mainly we are happy about the PUD being able to help us with these trees, because we were kind of lost in knowing what to do.

The dead tree delimbed itself!!

Me and Lacey chillaxin'

This is our current view from the north end.  See the Willow Tree? Those guys are amazing!!

Ground View

Trees.... Trees we want to cut down.

In our Solar Survey post, we demonstrated how the trees and buildings around you can affect your solar exposure. In general, our current solar exposure is truly great, but we can always dream, can't we?

That pesky bump on the right hand side of our survey was problematic for us on several levels: it limited both our solar and wind exposures (Ideally, you want your wind turbine to be above everything else.), they exposed our structure to a falling tree hazard and lastly, one of them was DEAD. D-E-A-D as a doornail. What is a doornail anyway?

Ryan called every tree man and yard he could find near our site. Four trees was not enough of a haul to even mess with.  We were at the property cutting down one of the damaged trees last week and our neighbor Mike showed up. He said, "You have a dead tree. Just call the PUD and they'll remove it for you."  Really!!!???  Seriously??!!!

These trees??    They're kind of tall. Mike went on to say that since the power lines go along the road, the PUD was invested in preventing an issue with the dead tree possibly falling over during the rough Washougal winters.


We were so disheartened that somehow we were going to have to figure out a way to cut down that dead tree ourselves.

Enter Jim Huggins of Clark PUD.   (Our new favorite man in the whole world)

We met with him and his tree man this week.

One signature on a permit and it's all set up.

The best part is that they are going to fall all four trees because the dead one is in the back and a real pain to get to.

Here is a photo of the marked trees. The dead one is the left one in the back. Right next to it is one that is dying and leaning.


They will be falling all four of these trees whole next week. We will try to be there and get a video.

For the next... year? or so, we will be chopping up these trees. We plan to give some of the firewood to our neighbors as a gesture. We will be able to use some of it but suffice it to say, we will have quite a bit of firewood if any friends or family are interested. 

Our Solar Exposure

Please pardon the interruption of our regularly scheduled program of the Health Petal to bring some information that we just learned.  Our site has awesome solar access.  Ryan and I took the Pathfinder tool to the property site yesterday and conducted a Solar Survey.

In a nutshell, this device has a compass and some special paper. Stand at the place where you think you want to put your solar panels. Ideally, get up on something high so that you can duplicate the height of the panels. We did ours on the ground. Doing this skews the results to the conservative side.

Point the tool to TRUE SOUTH. In our area that means 165 degrees. Place the dome over the paper and reflected on the dome are all of the possible sources of shadow or sun blockage. On the paper is the path of the sun at the various times of the year. Trace the shadows on the dome to the paper.  Add up all of the values, factor in the angle of the panels (you can use 100% value if your panels are mounted at the optimum 33-37.8 degrees of tilt, which ours will be). The result is the percentage sun exposure of your site. You will be able to see on the paper, where the sun will be every month of the year approximately. It's pretty cool.

According to our survey, we have 83.1% solar exposure!!! 

This is a conservative value as we were at ground level, used only the full values on the paper and the fact that we may be cutting down one or more of the trees that you can see on the bottom right of the paper (one is dead).