Almost every tree we remove from a roof had visible warning signs. The ones worth walking your property for: mushrooms or conks growing at the base or on the trunk, which indicate internal decay that is already well advanced by the time it fruits; a trunk cavity or a hollow sound when struck; bark falling away in sheets on a section of trunk; a lean that has recently changed, especially with soil heaving or cracked ground on the opposite side of the lean; and dead limbs in the upper canopy while the lower tree still leafs out.

Dead ash deserves its own mention in Michigan. Emerald ash borer killed ash across the state and a great many of those trees are still standing. Dead ash does not decline gracefully — it goes brittle, sheds large limbs without warning, and becomes genuinely dangerous to climb, which is why removal gets more expensive and more difficult the longer it stands.

A tree removed on a Tuesday afternoon is planned work with a written quote. The same tree removed at 2am in the rain, off a roof, is an insurance claim with a deductible and a repair.

The instinct is to get the tree off. The correct move is to close the hole first. Once a roof is open, water does not stay where the tree hit it — it runs down rafters, soaks the insulation, saturates the ceiling below, and finds wall cavities on the floor beneath that. The difference between a roof repair and a three-room repair is usually measured in hours of rain, not in the weight of the tree.

Removal itself is rigging work rather than cutting work. A trunk resting on a roof is under tension and compression in ways that are not visible from the ground, and the structure under it has already lost capacity. Taking it off in controlled sections keeps the shock load off a weakened frame; cutting through in one pass can drop the rest of the tree through the ceiling.

On downed power lines there is no judgement call to make. Treat every line as energized, keep everyone at least 30 feet away including from anything the line is touching, and let the utility confirm it is dead. A tree in contact with a live conductor can energize the ground around it.

Water that comes through a roof is not clean water by the time it reaches your ceiling. It has passed through shingles, decking, insulation and whatever else was in the attic, and it carries all of it. Saturated fiberglass and cellulose insulation does not dry usefully in place — it holds water against the structure and has to come out.

On mold: the widely repeated “mold grows in 24 to 48 hours” is a misreading of the EPA’s guidance. That window is the deadline for getting materials dry in order to prevent growth — not a measured growth rate. The practical meaning is the same either way: the clock that matters starts when the water arrives, not when someone notices it.

Wet ceiling wiring is worth naming too. The standard cable run above ceilings is rated for dry locations only, and electrical industry guidance is that soaked cable and recessed fixtures should be replaced rather than dried and reused.

The question comes up on nearly every job where a tree crossed a property line, and the answer surprises people. In general, when a healthy tree falls from a neighbor’s yard onto your house in a storm, it is treated as an act of nature and your own policy responds to your damage — not theirs.

Where that changes is negligence. If the tree was visibly dead, decayed or hazardous, and the owner had been told about it, responsibility can shift. This is why a written, dated notification to a neighbor about a tree you are worried about is worth far more than a conversation over the fence.

We are a restoration contractor, not your attorney, and we will not pretend otherwise. What we can do is document the condition of the tree as we find it — decay, cavities, prior dieback — which is the evidence any of those conversations ends up turning on.