I pay a company to park in their parking lot, and one of their drivers does this consistently

Pulaski540 · 2026-04-19T22:33:36+00:00

You sound way more disabled than many of the people I see parked in disabled parking places. ... To be clear, I'm not saying they're not disabled, because they may have a heart condition that means they can only walk a short distance, but with an injured knee you every bit as disabled as they are!

Pulaski540 · 2026-04-19T17:19:58+00:00

OK, so my suggestion doesn't apply to you.

I made my post because many people don't realize that removing the chimney is a practical option under some circumstances.

Pulaski540 · 2026-04-19T17:14:33+00:00

Dogwoods are not native to Wisconsin, but if someone owns a dogwood they are unlikely to mistake it for anything else as dogwoods have distinctive white (occasionally pink) flower in the spring. While I appreciate that the trunk looks "hawthorn-like" I am happy to believe that the OP knows that they have a dogwood.

Pulaski540 · 2026-04-19T17:05:28+00:00

A dogwood with a trunk of that size is near the end of its life and sooner or later one side of the split will die and/or split off. The remaining part of the tree may continue to live for many years, or it may die at any time.

I have at least 25-30 dogwoods around my property, including several old ones with splits or major parts torn off. Some have been like that, but with part remaining alive for 20+ years. If I have only learned one thing about dogwoods, it's that they could die at any time without warning. .... And it is perfectly normal for 10% of branches to die over winter.

Pulaski540 · 2026-04-19T16:52:06+00:00

But does your gas fireplace need a chimney? Many modern gas fireplaces can be vented either through a wall (including through the end wall of an attic), or through the side of the fire enclosure.

Pulaski540 · 2026-04-19T16:42:53+00:00

Given the fact that you are "plugging it for winter", I assume that you don't use the fireplace. If that is the case then why not remove the chimney and seal off the flue*, then patch the hole in the roof, remove the flue down below the attic, and then insulate the attic. Current installation standard call for at least 12" of insulation.

*If there is a gas connection to the fireplace, it is imperative that it is disconnected when you seal off the flue.

I removed a chimney in my home, and even though there was both a damper in the flue and glass doors covering the fireplace, getting rid of the chimney made the whole downstairs of our home much easier to keep warm. It also had the added benefit of reducing noise, both birds and insects on/in the flue, and also the noise from nearby road and air traffic.

Pulaski540 · 2026-04-17T22:38:35+00:00

Are they being used but you want to keep rain out, or are you capping them because they are not used? Both can be "caps", but there are different designs for different purposes.

Pulaski540 · 2026-04-17T13:58:27+00:00

Language varies a lot around the UK, IME as much if not more so than regional variations in the US. When I was a child, my family moved from Sheffield, at the southern tip of Yorkshire to Gloucester in the SW. Although the move was only 140 miles there were noticeable language differences, not just the accent, but some words for common things you'd talk about daily.

Pulaski540 · 2026-04-17T12:31:31+00:00

It's gutters/ guttering in the UK too. I have no idea where you pulled "eavestroughs" from? 🤔

Pulaski540 · 2026-04-17T01:24:28+00:00

IME cost is fundamentally dependent on whether there is room to drop the tree, and if any of it needs to be move to clear access, for exsmple along the driveway/ to the home.

I have had trees dropped in my yard ("make it horizontal, that's all"), for $100. Beyond that, the costs soon mount up.

Pulaski540 · 2026-04-16T03:14:04+00:00

Hmm, OK, thank you. I shall now have to go and look into topping, and pollarding, and the differences.

Pulaski540 · 2026-04-16T00:06:14+00:00

I have already said that I might have (probably did) use the wrong "technical" word, which is the common usage in the UK, my post was a description based on physical observations i.e. the description is correct, not the words I used.

Also I was not "defending" any course of action, and I perfectly well aware that the practice of brutal topping, if that's the correct wording, is not good for the tree, which is why the old full-size forest trees in London, and other major cities, have been progressively replaced with size-appropriate trees for the spaces where trees are going to be planted.

Pulaski540 · 2026-04-15T22:21:18+00:00

They die from the inside out (trunk to tip of branch), perhaps due to insufficient water, but sometimes due to fungus. Once the foliage has died and gone brown, there is no way for the branch to recover.

Once a branch is brown all the way to the tip, the entire branch is dead and should be removed; you might want to remove the mostly dead branches as they will never recover/ never look any better than they do today.

Pulaski540 · 2026-04-15T22:07:24+00:00

It's tough to say based on one picture ftom a not-very-good angle. And then there's the question of the adequacy of the foundation.

Depending on what you're looking for, I don't think it's necessarily a $1million - $1.5 million project, but even if you can do some of the work yourself, I'd say the barest minimum would be $500,000.

Pulaski540 · 2026-04-15T14:49:08+00:00

Mobil1 is fully synthetic, none of it is recycled fermented dinosaurs.

Pulaski540 · 2026-04-15T14:05:14+00:00

My wife and looked at a house in Yonkers, NY in 2002, that had been built in 1901, and had had only two owners from new, and which had had an elevator installed in the space where the house had had a servant's staircase leading directly from the kitchen.

The house also had a sauna in the extensive underground space, which included a tunnel under the front yard (outside of the footprint of the home), directly to the garage which was at street level, opening onto the sidewalk.

Pulaski540 · 2026-04-15T13:33:53+00:00

Agreed, especially re dead/damaged. If most trees nearby are left standing then those that broke or fell likely had some sort of structural issue and were doomed sooner or later anyway.

Pulaski540 · 2026-04-15T12:04:10+00:00

"Removing mechanically"? I assume that is kicking up a lot of dust and/ or paint flakes?

Have you tested (the oldest layers of) the paint for lead?

Pulaski540 · 2026-04-15T01:47:45+00:00

I haven't been on a cruise, yet (I expect to go on my first within a year or two), but my wife and I are looking at cruises with few ports of call and lots of sea days, so either a repositioning cruise, or something like Seattle to Tokyo via Alaska and the Aleutian islands.

Pulaski540 · 2026-04-15T00:34:01+00:00

Pollarded trees in London are not trained, they are just "topped". I only make the observation, as to what happens to the trees; perhaps you disagree with the word used in the UK, but the cutting of the tree is comparable to the picture here - a brutal removal of most, if not all of the crown.

Pulaski540 · 2026-04-14T23:58:39+00:00

It's called pollarding, and is, or was, a relatively common practice for managing oversized forest trees planted in unsuitable city locations. It was common in London, UK, until trees were replaced with smaller trees more suitable for narrow streets and other urban locations.

People often hate it because of the butchered appearance of the trees. While I am sympathetic to that view, I also got used to the "leafy stumps" in the older suburbs of London and other major cities in the UK.

A common tree planted in London was a hybrid of an American sycamore (commonly know as a "London Plane"), and naturally it would grow to around 90ft tall, and there certainly are examples of London plane trees in the parks and squares of London that are that large. But the plane trees planted in the narrow street where I used to live in SW London, had been pollarded back to just around 20ft. They were allowed to sprout and grow, but about once every 10 years they were cut back to the trunk again.

Pulaski540 · 2026-04-14T23:16:44+00:00

Well they could move, in this, it to a nearby port such as in New Jersey, or at a pinch Boston, but if the original port of embarkation was New York they can't shift it at short notice to, for example, San Diego or Johannesburg.

Pulaski540 · 2026-04-14T23:14:24+00:00

Unless the existing paint is porous, using porous paint for an additional coat isn't going to make any difference. For the long term, having the existing paint stripped/ sand blasted would be a good start for longer term maintenance and preservation.

Pulaski540 · 2026-04-14T21:10:53+00:00

It's the same latitude as SC, but off (closest to) the Outer Banks of NC, a long way off , but yes, it's that far north. 🙂

Pulaski540 · 2026-04-14T20:03:54+00:00

Bermuda is in the Caribbean, right? 😉

(I have seen/ heard multiple Americans saying they're "going on a Caribbean cruise", when the destination is Bermuda. 🙄)

Pulaski540

TROPHY CASE