Tree Service in Arnada, WA

Arnada was laid out with a planting strip between the sidewalk and the curb, and whoever filled those strips picked trees that get sixty feet tall. A century later that decision is still generating work. The canopy over these blocks is most of why people want to live here, and it is also most of why they call us.

Very little of it is an emergency. It is a limb over a porch roof, a sidewalk panel that has become a trip hazard, or a maple that has outgrown the twelve feet of ground it was handed.

The Planting Strip Was Never Big Enough

A strip tree gets a narrow band of soil with concrete on both sides of it, so the roots do the only thing available to them and run flat, right under the walk. That is what lifts panels and rolls curbs, and it is why so many Arnada trunks have no visible flare left at the base. Norway and silver maple, sweetgum and horse chestnut all show up here, and every one outgrows the ground it was given. Before we quote anything we check whether the tree is yours or the city’s, because out in the strip it frequently is not yours.

The Alley Decides How the Day Goes

Most of these blocks still have their alleys, and the alley is usually the difference between a straightforward day and an awkward one. If a chip truck fits behind the house, brush travels twenty feet instead of a hundred and fifty. If it does not — a leaning fence, a low eave, a car across the entrance — everything comes out to the street by hand and the job runs longer. There is also almost always a service drop threaded down the alley to the back of each house, with forty years of growth wrapped around it.

• Crown cleaning and reduction so limbs clear porch roofs, gutters and upper windows
• Removing declining maples and sweetgums that have outgrown the planting strip
• Lifting canopies off detached garages and alley fence lines
• Grinding stumps where the only route in is a side gate or an alley gate
• Storm cleanup where one downed tree closes the alley for everyone behind it

Roots, Laterals and What Is Actually Cracking

Half the root calls in Arnada turn out to be sewer calls. The laterals under these old houses are often clay with a joint every few feet, and a root does not have to break anything to get in — it finds the seam and grows. Taking the tree out stops it getting worse; it does not repair the pipe, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling a removal. Grinding is the same conversation from the other end. We get locates before a grinder turns, because gas, water and cable all run through these old strips at depths nobody wrote down.