Tree service questions, answered for Winston-Salem

Under thirty feet is commonly $250 to $700. Thirty to sixty feet is usually $700 to $1,700. Sixty to eighty feet, where most mature neighborhood oaks sit, runs about $1,700 to $3,800. Above eighty feet is $3,800 to $8,000 and higher with a crane. Access moves a job within its bracket further than anything else.

Usually because they are not the same job. One includes the stump, hauling the wood, and raking the area; the other leaves a pile and a stump. Read what each quote says it covers before comparing the totals, and the gap generally explains itself.

Yes. Somebody comes out, walks the property, looks at the tree and the way in, and follows up with a price in writing. There is no charge for that and no obligation attached to it.

Most residential stumps run $100 to $450, priced from the diameter across the widest point at ground level. A minimum charge applies, so grinding several stumps in one visit costs far less per stump than one on its own.

Roughly $200 to $500 on a small ornamental, $400 to $1,000 on a mid-sized tree, and $900 to $2,200 on a large mature oak. It is priced mostly by time in the canopy, so crown density matters as much as height.

Three ways that work. Leave the trunk wood in firewood rounds rather than having it hauled. Keep the chips as mulch. And batch the work, since a crew already set up on your drive can handle the tree next to the one they came for at a fraction of a separate visit.

Demand does, and availability collapses, which is a different thing. What changes a storm job is the work itself: cutting wood that is under load, working around damaged structures, and often needing a bucket or a crane because the tree is no longer safe to climb.

Not for a tree standing entirely on private residential property. Winston-Salem regulates trees through the Unified Development Ordinance, and the tree preservation requirements in UDO Section B.3-4.2 attach to development projects requiring a land disturbing permit rather than to homeowners.

The city. That strip is public right-of-way, and the city Urban Forestry program cares for trees on city property and enforces the tree ordinances, with crews planting and maintaining along rights-of-way and in parks. Work on those trees goes through the city rather than a private crew.

Only if you cut it. The city collects residential brush, with limbs no larger than six inches wide and six feet long, stacked with the cut ends facing the same direction. It does not collect brush cut by contractors or commercial services, and it does not collect from vacant lots.

During the regular season, January 1 to October 31, collection typically takes twenty-one working days or less per quadrant. From November 1 to January 15 brush collection is limited because leaf season takes priority, though small branches and clippings in yard carts are collected weekly.

Open burning of vegetative material in North Carolina generally requires a burning permit from the N.C. Forest Service, with additional restrictions inside city limits and further constraints on days with poor air quality or high fire danger. It is not something to improvise on the day.

It can. Winston-Salem carries several designated districts, and where a property sits inside a locally designated one, exterior work may be subject to review that would not apply elsewhere. Whether a specific removal falls under that is a question for the city, and it is a short call worth making first.

North Carolina does not issue a trade licence specific to arborists or tree removal companies. What established companies carry is general liability and workers compensation insurance, and many employ or are led by an ISA Certified Arborist, which is a voluntary industry credential rather than a state licence.

In most Winston-Salem neighborhoods, oak. Willow oak and water oak were planted heavily as street and yard trees; white oak and southern red oak are more often trees that were already there. Tulip poplar, sweetgum, red maple, and loblolly pine make up most of the rest.

Most likely bacterial leaf scorch, caused by the bacterium Xylella fastidiosa, which NC State Extension lists as a serious disease of oaks. The signature is browning that starts at the leaf margin in late July or early August and returns on the same tree every year, a little worse each season. Simple drought scorch appears in dry years and not in wet ones.

Not automatically. A tree carries most of its structural load in the outer wood, and a mature hardwood can lose a considerable proportion of its interior and stand safely for years. What matters is how much sound shell remains around the circumference and whether an opening interrupts it, which is an assessment made at the tree.

It depends whether it has always leaned. A tree that grew toward the light built compensating wood and roots to match, and the lean is part of its structure. A lean that appeared recently, or ground that is cracked or lifted on the side opposite the lean, means the root plate is moving and that is worth a call.

Ash has opposite branching, compound leaves of five to nine leaflets, and diamond-patterned bark. It matters because North Carolina has been under a statewide emerald ash borer quarantine since 2015, and the N.C. Forest Service describes most of the crown dying within two years of symptoms and the tree dying within about five.

Their branches emerge in a tight crowd from nearly the same point on the trunk, at narrow angles, which traps bark in the unions instead of wood. Loaded with ice, those unions open. Callery pear is also recognized as invasive in North Carolina.

They are normal on Piedmont clay, where roots run wide and shallow because that is where the air and water are. They are inconvenient rather than dangerous. Cutting them to tidy a lawn is how a stable tree becomes an unstable one, since the roots doing the lifting are often structural.

Removal happens in any season. Pruning large hardwoods is best in the dormant season, roughly late fall through late winter, when structure is visible and the tree is not spending stored energy. Spring-flowering trees are pruned right after they bloom. Deadwood and hazards come out whenever they are found.

No, it makes it more dangerous. Cutting limbs back to stubs removes the leaf area the tree lives on and forces weakly attached regrowth from the cut ends. Within a few years the tree is back to a similar height with far worse attachments. Reduction pruning back to a suitable lateral branch achieves the goal properly.

A small ornamental is a morning. A sixty-foot oak in an open yard is most of a day for a crew of three. A large poplar over a house, rigged down piece by piece, is a full day and sometimes two. Stump grinding is usually a separate stop.

Equipment crossing a lawn leaves marks, and on wet ground it leaves ruts and compacts the soil under the trees you are keeping. Where and whether a machine crosses the grass is worth agreeing in advance, and on a wet week the right answer is sometimes to wait a few days.

Standard scope is that everything leaves: brush chipped, trunk bucked and loaded, area raked. Two variations save money and are worth asking for. Trunk wood cut into firewood rounds and left where you want it, and chips left in a pile as mulch.

People first: get everyone out of the rooms under the impact. If the service drop is down or any wire is on the ground, treat it as live and call the utility. Then call a tree company and your insurer. Photograph everything before anything moves, because those pictures are what the claim rests on.

Storm wood is under load in ways that are hard to read from the ground, and a bent, pinned limb releases fast and rarely where you expect. Combined with a chainsaw overhead, wet ground, and a possible service drop, it is the situation that fills emergency rooms after every ice event. Ground-level cleanup of what has already fallen clear is a different matter.