House & Home I have learnt 2 things about property this morning

1. Your lender doesn't care if your house falls down around you as long as you continue to make payments to them. (I am taking bets as to how long it will take for the house next door to self destruct)

2. If the a branch of a tree owned by council is impinging on your property and needs to be trimmed - you can only do it if you hire an Arborist whose qualifications are set out on a full page of instructions from the Council and costs twice as much. (Will wait till the branch reaches the power lines and then see who has to pay for it)

 

Is it the same branch?

 

Don't get me started on council arborists......

Funny story, around 2-3 years ago in a SE Melbourne bayside council, a local resident applied to have a huge gum tree overhanging his house cut down. Was denied.

During a storm a few months later, said major part of gumtree \went straight through the living room, kitchen, bathroom, caved in the roof etc about $200k damage.

SES cut part of the tree out of the house.

Said resident still had to apply to have the remnants of the tree removed, was denied by council and had to go through the entire VCAT process to get remaining part of the uprooted tree removed from right near his house and stump ground out.

House was tarped up during the VCAT process and waiting period. The best part of a year.

 

Sheesh, that's terrible.

 

Yep the whole tree needs to be trimmed, its about 3 storeys high, one branch is getting a little close to our powerline. It's not doing any harm and well away from the house. However, hell will have to freeze over before I pay for it ...

 

I plan on calling Ausgrid when the branch is a little closer, they trim the trees across the road cant see why they wont trim mine ...

 

Why wouldn’t they just claim on insurance to get the house fixed?

The VACT process to have the stump ground out is surely unrelated to the roof damage.

 

How close is the branch to the power line?

 

I agree, and then let insurance company slug it out with council ... perhaps wasn't insured

 

My post was nothing to do with the damage liability.

The residents in question weren't allowed to remove the remainder of tree without council approval, even though once the tree was removed from the living room/kitch etc, the remainder of the tree was essentially resting against the house.

 

Just sounds really odd ... we had a large gum tree, that dropped a branch on the neighbours car causing damage (act of God so we didn't have to pay anything) ... council couldn't approve removal fast enough. Within 2 weeks the tree was gone. We had to pay for removal but I was glad to see the back of it as always made be nervous leaning towards the house

 

The power network will trim trees if going into powerlines here. Look into that where you are?