Neighbours phone drop line through tree which I wish to prune. Best way to approach Openreach.

[damduck-egg]

A Sycamore by our gate is extending a branch over where the cars are parked and bird droppings are becoming a nuisance.

Removing the branch would not be a problem it's easily reached by a ladder up the trunk and the branch is still small enough to be sawn by a sharp handsaw. What prevents me from just doing it is the phone drop wire to a neighbour runs about a foot below the branch and probably won't take too kindly to a length of branch dropping on it. The wire is too far out from the trunk to trim the end of the branch beyond it and then the rest closer with the ladders I have. The next branch up is too high to climb up to so I cannot suspend the offending one from a rope and subsequently pull it away at an angle and that might snap anyway while doing it. Anyone know if Openreach are approachable to deal with problems like this and will trim it themselves. Or do they only worry if the branch is actually touching and causing faults. And if they are approachable is there a specific department to contact.

G Harman

[Martin Bonner]

How high is the branch you want to trim as it goes over the drop-wire?

Could you use a wire-saw or similar (for example:

) to cut the branch *just* after the drop wire, then *just* before it?

(I like the idea of using two people, each standing well clear of the drop zone).

uk.rec.gardening might have some suggestions.

[dennis]

You can't reach it with a pole pruner and saw through it just beyond the wire and then pull it to one side while chopping the rest?

[jrwalliker]

The drop wire may not mind. A neighbour had their tree "professionally" trimmed. A branch fell on the drop wire which pulled the fascia board off their neighbour's house without breaking the wire itself.

The "tree surgeon" jumped into his van and disappeared.

John

[PeterC]

um, won't the bird-crap just land from a gretaer heigh and with more velocity? If you cut off the lower one the little darlings will perch on the next one up.

[Andrew Gabriel]

That happened to a pole up the road from me on a crossroads. A car hit it, and the jolt was carried diagonally across the junction to the house on the opposite corner, where it pulled the facia and gutter off.

[Mike Barnes]

My brother and I managed to take out his neighbour's drop wire like that, despite what we thought were adequate precautions.

It turned out that the neighbour had switched to cable and wasn't bothered in the slightest. If we'd *known* that the job would have been rather simpler.

So it might be worth checking.

[Dave Liquorice]

Aye it's pretty tough stuff. Ice storm a year or so back put so much ice (nearly 2" in dia) onto the dropwires that they were dragged down to about 10' off the ground. I didn't see many BT men about in the following days, unlike power company people who had an awful lot of downed lines and snapped poles to deal with.

Which is why, when the flat roof and fasica where replaced, I got them to move the mounting point for the phone line onto the stone work. I don't want the facia ripped off, snap the phone pole instead. B-)

[docholliday93]

Some years ago I returned home after visiting my parents over Christmas. Since they tended to worry about such things I phoned straight away to say I'd arrived safely. As I came out to unload the car a couple of BT vans drew up, and one of the repairmen came up to me and asked if I'd reported a problem with the phone. Since I'd just made a call I was a little puzzled, but then looked up and saw a 2 metre length of flashing had been dislodged by the storms that year and was now hanging over the drop wire... As far as I know they did nothing more than get the ladders out and lift the flashing off.

[stuart noble]

IME BT will come and do that...eventually. Nothing lost if they say no

[Martin Brown]

Are you sure it was the phone drop wire? I have known a mains wire feed rip fixings off houses when a tree falls across it but a phone line usually just snaps unless it is an exceptionally weedy tree.

A branch just a couple of inches diameter did a lot of damage to the roof of a car parked unwisely under a nearby tree in a big storm.

I have a picture of a big tree across our road embedded in my hedge and partially supported by the mains feed cable for the village. Three phase aluminium wound round a tensioned steel hawser. It held but the supporting poles all bent like bananas and are now marked do not climb.

It was very exciting when they cut through it as the rebound of the tensioned wire was like a bow and arrow action.

Not surprised. I'm fairly used to it - trees often fall round here.

My phone line always fails when someone drops a tree on it. My master socket is conveniently located in the loft and one time I did all the official checks before going outside to find a tree across the road and my phone line snapped in two dangling in a puddle.

On the plus side by the time I reported it manually BT had already automatically logged it as a critical fault with earth leakage and cable on the deck which got a priority repair the same day.

[Tim Watts]

When I got my line reconnected, I asked BT to move the mounting into the brickwork too - I new I'd be replacing the gutterboard.

[jrwalliker]

Quite sure. And it was a fairly weedy tree.

John

[Gazz]

Most likely the house had nice shiney PVCu facia boards and soffets and all that bollix, fitted by the local (at the time) pikeys, where they nail some thin capping over the rotting wood,

They'd have unscrewed the phone line anchor, fitted their shit then put it back, so when the line was brought down, the wood had well and truly rotted away?

[jrwalliker]

No, nothing like that. Just plain timber, well painted, but maybe 90 years old so it could have been a little rotten in places. However, it didn't look too bad.

John