As this job seemed to be beyond my comfort/skill level, I called the insurance agency to see what they wanted to do....Let us just way that I was obviously not talking to the "A" team at the call center......They were very unhelpful....I suggested that they might want to get someone to perhaps decide to remove some tree weight from the roof before the barn fell.....They had zero motivation to help, and basically left the choice of contractors to me, as well as the decision to remove the tree from the roof or not." BUT," they said, "YOU MUST DO ALL YOU CAN TO MITIGATE ANY DAMAGE."
Kudos to "A Clean Cut Tree Removal" out of Wanatah, IN for their quick response and excellent work. They were fucking artists at trimming and cutting in just the right spots to remove the tree WITHOUT HITTING THE BARN WALLS. or adding to the damage.While there is still LOT of work to do, the weight is off the barn, and the roof is tarped.
And, I must say, FBI builds a strong building. The roof, while damaged, did support about 5 tons of tree, and somehow I doubt that that is a part of the design specs.
We will see how the insurance company handles things on Monday...
Since you used a contractor, you have receipts so this probably isn't a parallel with your situation, but a few years ago, we had a hurricane go through here (Isabel).
ReplyDeleteIt knocked one of my neighbor's trees down onto my property. The tree fell onto the house, but didn't do serious damage, basically knocked a hole in the roof and cracked one roof beam, it also took out a few sections of privacy fence and utterly crushed my aluminum backyard shed.
Anyway, not one to just sit around with a tree sitting on my house and a big hole in the roof, I broke out the trusty chainsaw and, by the next day, had the tree off the roof and a tarp over the hole, and the day after that, had the roof completely repaired.
There were a couple of worrisome moments when I thought I might do further damage to the house, but I took my time, used lots of ropes and supports to prevent things from shifting around, and got it done with no issues.
It took the insurance adjuster several weeks to get to me...understandable considering that there were many people in much worse shape than I was, but when he finally came out, I found out that I'd screwed up by taking matters into my own hands.
Basically, had I not fixed anything and just covered it with a tarp or whatever to keep water out, they would have paid me what a contractor would charge to do the work.
Since I did it myself, all they could pay me was for materials (for which I'd wisely saved the receipts) and $7.25 an hour for labor.
I don't know about you, but I consider my time worth quite a bit more than $7.25 an hour...so as far as I'm concerned, I got ripped off by being so darn self-sufficient.
Oh well. Live and learn.