Tim bowman's problem is up. Way up.
"We used to love it but now it's an absolute pain," he tells FairGo.
He's talking about his tree and by the eye, it's well over twice as high as his house.
"We're guessing it's around the five stories high mark," he says.
It's a ten tonne English Oak. It's 150-years-old. An arborist told FairGo its health would have started declining 50 years ago.
Tim says, in season, acorns pummelling his roof keep him up but he's more worried about the bigger things that fall.
"The big bits of wood, branches (they go) clink/clunk right through the night."
Then he invited me onto his roof to show me what hadn't fallen yet.
"There's one, two, there's three major limbs here if they let go, bearing in mind this is a tree coming to the end of it's life, if they let go it's going to cause one hell of a lot of damage."
An arborist told us each branch system could weigh up to a tonne.
Tim's tree is protected by the Christchurch City Council. He can prune branches less than 5 cm in diameter but anything bigger he'll need a resource consent. This comes with a one thousand dollar application fee and if the council say no, a hearing will cost in the region of ten thousand dollars.
He could apply for a tree removal certificate. Which will cost nothing but he'd need an arborist's report stating the tree is dead, dying or dangerous. For this sort of tree, it will cost $1,500 to $2,000 dollars.
Tim says they're happy to pay to trim the tree.
If this is health and safety and we feel so strongly about it, we would gladly cut those limbs that I shown you earlier at our cost but we're not allowed to, simple as that.
There are 1,255 protected trees on private property in Christchurch.
The Christchurch City Council say the tree was planted around 1860 and reconsidered for protection during the recent district plan process where an independent panel considered the tree "most appropriate" and decided to retain it.
The council have offered though to send out an arborist to check the tree and offer an initial assessment particularly from a safety perspective.
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