Sound & Hollow — Tree Risk & Dormant Pruning

01 · What we do

Six things, done in the order the tree needs them.

Everything here starts from the assessment, not from a truck already parked in your driveway. If the answer is that the tree needs nothing this year, that is what the report will say, and we will not have sold you anything.

Dormant structural pruning

Codominant stems reduced, included bark addressed, crossing limbs removed. Cuts outside the collar, ANSI A300.

From $640 · single tree under 40 ft

Crown reduction & end weight

Weight taken off the outer third, where the lever is longest. Lowers wind sail and the load on a saturated root plate.

From $1,450 · mature conifer

Cabling & bracing

A dynamic cable between codominant stems buys years for a tree that is otherwise sound. Inspected annually, in writing.

From $890 · per cable

Deadwooding

Dead limbs over the driveway, the roof, the sidewalk. The ones that fall on a still day in August with no warning at all.

From $480 · per tree

Removal & permit filing

We file with Urban Forestry under Title 11 and we tell you before you pay whether we think it will be granted.

Filing included · quoted after assessment

Stump grinding

Ground below grade, chips left or hauled, the hole backfilled so grass takes instead of sinking two years later.

From $210 · plus haul-off

A gloved hand holds a white rubber sounding mallet against the wet fissured bark of a street tree; the arm wears a hi-vis sleeve, and a house porch and a parked car sit out of focus behind the trunk. — Ten minutes, on the strip between the curb and your sidewalk. The vest is the only saturated colour in the picture, and that is the entire reason it exists.

How a job actually goes.

01Sounding on site. Mallet on the stem and the buttress roots, root collar excavated by hand, resistograph where the mallet leaves a question.
02Written report within three working days — photographs, findings, a recommendation, and the permit position if the tree is regulated.
03The work. Or nothing, if nothing is what the tree needs this winter.

Book a sounding — $385

A written tree assessment on an aluminium clipboard lying on the wet hood of a pickup truck, with a rubber sounding mallet, a diameter tape, a folding rule and a pair of leather work gloves beside it. — Findings, photographs, a recommendation and the permit position, on paper, in your hand. You can give it to a neighbour, an insurer or the next company you call — it is yours whether or not you hire us.

02 · The sounding

What's inside decides.

Sounding is exactly what it sounds like. A rubber mallet against the stem: sound wood rings full and long, a cavity answers dull and short. It is the first thing anyone competent does, it takes ten minutes, and it is right most of the time.

When the mallet leaves a question we drill a resistograph trace and read the density the whole way through. Where the needle goes flat, there is nothing left to hold on to — and how much flat, and where, is the whole decision.

Resistograph № 4 · SE 34th & Salmon · American elm · 31 in DBH Drill depth 0–320 mm · relative density

Decay column · 212–268 mm · 26% of the section · sound wood continuous around the load path · tree stays

The limb that came off that elm.

SpecimenAmerican elm limb, 19 in across
AddressSE 34th & Salmon · sounding № 4
DecayWet, black, stringy — off-centre, toward the top
FindingSound wood continuous around the load path

A quarter of this limb was gone. The tree stayed. Sound wood in the right place holds a tree up, and nobody can tell you which quarter you have from the sidewalk.

Sounding + written assessment

$385

Flat. Photographs, the resistograph trace where we take one, a written recommendation, and the permit position if the tree is regulated. Credited against any work you book with us within 90 days.

Book a sounding

The freshly sawn end of a large elm limb: pale cream sapwood with growth rings and chainsaw kerf marks, and a black fibrous decay column taking about a quarter of the face, off-centre toward the upper right. — Sounding № 4 · the face is the report. Sawdust still on the rim; lichen still on the bark.

03 · The dormant window

The dark half of the year is when the work is honest.

With the leaves off we can see the whole structure — every codominant stem, every bark inclusion, every dead limb that hides inside summer foliage. The tree isn't spending anything to heal a wound it made in October. Cuts close cleanly in spring, on the tree's own schedule instead of ours.

Birches and some maples bleed sap if we wait too long, so late dormancy has an end, and the end is the buds. Anything that flowers in spring gets pruned after it flowers, not before. That is the whole calendar, and it is why we are busiest when everyone else has gone quiet.

Leaf-offStructure visible end to end. Deadwood stops hiding.
BleedersBirch, and maple past late dormancy. We move those to summer.
Spring bloomDogwood, cherry, magnolia — pruned after they flower.
ANSI A300Every cut outside the branch collar. No flush cuts, ever.

The dormant window

Right now, the window is open.

Today is Dec 14 · 63 days left in leaf-off

A residential street seen straight down the middle of the road: two rows of big bare street trees in the strip between curb and sidewalk, their crowns meeting overhead, wooden porches and parked cars along both sides. — One block, forty trees, nothing hidden. From December to February we can read a whole street from the road — which is why the survey work happens now and not in July.

04 · Storm dispatch

The east wind is the one that takes the big ones.

Arctic air pools in the Columbia Basin. When a low comes up the coast, that cold air drains west through the Gorge — a sea-level gap straight through the mountains — and spills over the east side of the city at fifty to seventy miles an hour. Warm Pacific rain falls into that cold layer and freezes on contact. This is not weather in general. It is a specific piece of geography, and it points at your neighbourhood.

Add a winter of saturated soil and the root plate rotates in the mud instead of the trunk breaking. That is how Portland loses a hundred-year Douglas-fir in one night. Taking end weight off the top third in December is how it doesn't.

A bare branch fully sheathed in clear ice, icicles hanging from every twig, the branch visibly bending under the load. — Freezing rain, sheathed a quarter inch thick. The branch is already bending. Ice is not cold — ice is weight.

Night, heavy rain: a fallen limb across a fence and the back of a parked car, two crew in hi-vis rain jackets seen from behind, an amber beacon burning at the edge of frame. — Two in the morning, on a residential street, with a limb across a fence and the back of somebody's car. Nobody enjoys this part.

We keep one crew on call from November through March. Amber beacon, chip truck, and a saw that is already sharp. We clear what is dangerous first and come back in daylight for the rest — cutting a loaded limb in the dark is how people get hurt.

Before we arrivePark on the street, not under the tree, and keep everyone out from under the canopy.
If a wire is involvedAssume it is live, stay thirty feet back, and call the utility first — not us.
DaylightAnything that isn't dangerous waits until morning. It is safer and it costs you less.

Storm dispatch, 24 hours, November through March.

First two hours on site, including make-safe cutting and haul-off of what we drop. Anything beyond that is quoted in daylight, before we start.

Storm callout · first two hours

$720

Storm line · (503) 555-0184

05 · The short list

What we won't do.

A company that lists what it turns down is a company that has turned work down. Here is ours, in the order we get asked.

The photograph is the second item, and it is the expensive one: rope, a friction saver over the limb, and nobody's spikes in a tree that is staying. Gaffs are faster. They are also a wound in the cambium every eighteen inches, all the way up.

Seen from the sidewalk, a climber in a hi-vis jacket works on a rope thirty feet up a bare street tree, with the roof, chimney and windows of a two-storey house and a run of power lines behind him. — Laurelhurst, December. Rope over a friction saver, house twelve feet away, wires on the far side. This one is staying, so nothing goes into the bark.

We don't top trees.

Topping doesn't make a tree safer. It makes a tree full of weak regrowth attached to nothing, and it fails in about five years — usually onto the thing you were worried about in the first place. Those flat round scars on old street trees are topping cuts, and the elm at the top of this page is still carrying somebody's from thirty years ago.

We don't spike a tree we aren't removing.

Every gaff is a wound in the cambium, all the way up. If the tree is staying, we climb it on rope and a friction saver, and it takes longer.

If the permit says no, the answer is no.

Urban Forestry decides, not us. We'll tell you our read before you pay for anything, and if the tree is a Heritage Tree we'll tell you that too — including that the hearing is public.

06 · The streets we know

Same city, four completely different problems.

Ladd's Addition

Dominant species American elm · Planted 1907–1910

About thirteen hundred street trees, most of them American elms planted between 1907 and 1910, and the neighbourhood has been inoculating them against Dutch elm disease since the mid-nineties. The city still loses roughly thirty-five elms a year. On these blocks we work slowly and we report anything that flags, whether or not it is your tree.

Eastmoreland & Sellwood

Watch Western redcedar, top dieback · Cause drought

Big conifers on small lots, planted when the lots were bigger. Western redcedar is the one to watch: the tops brown out after a dry summer and people assume it's a disease. It usually isn't — it's drought, and the fix is water, not a saw.

Mt. Tabor & Laurelhurst

Watch Bigleaf maple, epiphyte load · Factor slope + wind

Slope, wind exposure and enormous old bigleaf maples with more moss on them than leaves. Epiphyte load matters here in a way it doesn't on the flat. Two trees on the same street can be in completely different trouble.

Woodstock, Foster-Powell, Brentwood-Darlington

Watch Street sweetgum, Norway maple · Issue sidewalk lift

Street sweetgums and Norway maples lifting sidewalks, and homeowners getting told the tree has to come out. Sometimes it does. More often it's a root-pruning and paving question, and that conversation is cheaper than the removal.

A concrete sidewalk slab lifted and cracked by a buttress root that has broken through the seam, with a folding rule laid across the raised edge for scale and a house and picket fence behind. — This is the conversation we have most often. Three inches of lift, a letter from the city, and somebody has already told the owner the tree has to come out. It usually doesn't: root pruning on the far side and a new panel cost a fraction of a removal, and the tree keeps the shade on the house.

Service areaLadd's Addition · Sellwood-Moreland · Eastmoreland · Mt. Tabor · Laurelhurst · Woodstock · Brentwood-Darlington · Foster-Powell · the West Hills.

07 · The crew

Three people. You will meet all of them.

Hollis Vance

Owner · ISA Certified Arborist

Does the soundings and signs the reports. If there is a resistograph trace in your file, Hollis drilled it and Hollis will explain it to you standing under the tree.

Junie Okafor

Lead climber

Fourteen winters in the canopy. Rope and friction saver on anything that's staying, and the person who decides where a limb is actually going to go.

Ray Salcedo

Dispatch & permits

Answers the storm line at two in the morning and files the Title 11 paperwork the next week. Ray will tell you honestly how long the permit is going to take.

Book a sounding.

Call, or send an email with your cross streets and a photograph of the whole tree from across the street. We'll tell you on the phone whether it sounds like something that needs looking at this month or something that can wait until next winter.

Phone(503) 555-0184
Emailcrew@soundandhollow.com
Yard4823 SE 17th Avenue, Portland, OR 97202
HoursMon–Sat, 7:00 AM – 5:30 PM
Storm dispatch24 hours, November through March
Assessment$385, credited against booked work

Call (503) 555-0184 Email the crew

We answer the phone ourselves. If we're up a tree, leave your cross streets and we'll call back the same evening — and in storm season the line is answered whatever the hour.

Questions we get every December

Is the moss killing my tree?

No. Moss and licorice fern are epiphytes — they hold onto the bark, not into it, and they take nothing from the tree. What they do is hold water, and water is weight. We only start caring about the moss when there's ice coming.

What does the $385 sounding include?

A mallet sounding of the stem and buttress roots, a root collar inspection, photographs, a resistograph trace where the mallet leaves a question, and a written recommendation you can hand to anybody. It is credited against work you book with us within 90 days.

Do I need a permit to take a tree out?

In Portland, any street tree needs one, and on private property it generally starts at twelve inches of diameter at breast height. Heritage Trees need the Urban Forestry Commission's consent at a public hearing. Urban Forestry grants it, not us — we file it and we tell you our honest read first.

Can you prune in July?

For deadwood and clearance, yes, any month. For structural work, we'd rather wait for leaf-off — we can see more and the tree spends less. Birch and some maples are the exception and are better in summer, because they bleed if you cut them at the end of dormancy.

My neighbour's tree is leaning at my house.

Lean by itself is not a defect — plenty of trees have leaned for eighty years. What matters is whether the lean is new, whether the soil on the high side is cracked or heaved, and what the root plate is sitting in. That's a sounding, and the written report is the thing you can actually give your neighbour.

How fast can you get here in a storm?

On a normal night, inside two hours. On the night of an ice storm, honestly, we can't promise that and neither can anybody else — we go to what is on a house or across a road first. If a line is down we don't touch it and neither should you.

Close-up of wet bark covered in pale grey-green foliose lichen with a patch of darker moss.

Foliose lichen and moss on bark. Both are holding onto the tree, neither is holding into it.

We tell you whether the tree stays, before anybody starts a saw.