My Very First "Accident" with my Rig.

All.

Looking for some feedback here. I put the word Accident in Quotes because the issue here is a lack of maintenance on low limbs over a public way. I got home from my weekend Camping and the entrance that I normally would take into my neighborhood was blocked by cars on both sides of the street making it impossible to go that way. So I went to the second entrance for my neighborhood and proceeded to go around the block to access my street from the correct side to allow for backing in to my RV Pad.

I got about 1/3 of the way down one of the side streets when I heard limbs breaking. NOT A good Sound. But there was no going back so I assessed the number and thickness of the remaining limbs and determined that the damage and the worse of it was passed. My AC unit is Trashed at this point and as long as there was going to be no additional damage especially to the ROOF I proceeded slowly.

Well it occurred to me after the fact - I always thought that tree limbs needed to be at least 15 ft above the road or the Road needed to be sighed as low clearance. I will be calling my ins. co tomorrow, but I think the Town may be at fault here for lack of proper tree maintenance. I'm posting the photos of the damage.
Damage to the ODS of the AC Shroud.
fan and coil damage

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Sorry to hear about the "accident".

I cannot help with the regulations in your area for low hanging tree branches; however I can suggest the repairs may be able to be done fairly easily by yourself. The fan blade and AC cover need to be replaced for sure, and the fin straightening can be done easlily with a Radiater Fin Repair tool like this one.

Hope this helps.
Brian

You raise a good question here - I'm anxious to see if there is a good answer. My neighborhood is the same way... I can barely get to my house via one route - The other more direct route is covered with live oak trees and limbs cover the road everywhere - the garbage trucks just crash through on collection day. These are all county roads and it would take a crew all summer to clear the limbs...

It's funny to read this thread beause I'm vacationing in Michigan. I was heading over to the local Wallymart to get supplies (without the trailer) and my truck brushed several tree limbs along the side of the county road. My wife just about jumped out of her seat. I was thinking that had I had the trailer connected, there would have been damage for sure!

I will be contacting my Insurance Company tomorrow - Mainly to determine if they will go after the town for the damages - if I need to pay the deductible then I might as well pay to fix it... $500 deductable and the point system in MA will ding me an addtional $300/$200/$100 for the next three years. so It would be cheaper for me to pay out of pocket.

This situation has been a concern of mine since I got the Cyclone - how is one to know that the Road you are on is properly maintained and provides antiquate clearance.

I'll post here what the outcome is tomorrow.

Kevin

Perhaps if you contact the city/county and specifically advise them of the route in question and the reason why (i.e. damages to your rig) they might accommodate tree maintenance.Otherwise they've been given fair notice.

ILH said:

Perhaps if you contact the city/county and specifically advise them of the route in question and the reason why (i.e. damages to your rig) they might accommodate tree maintenance.Otherwise they've been given fair notice.

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Ian,


The Town Officials will be notified tomorrow - if for not other reason than I want to be able to safely drive down the roads in my town without damaging my RIG again. That and that there are many other RVs in town that could run into the same issue if it is not addressed.

Kevin

So sorry to hear this Kevin. I know how terrible you feel buddy! Good luck with your repair and your communications with the town. Let us know how you make out.

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Kevin, sorry you got nailed with tree damage. I'm not sure but I think the law is 14ft clearance for federal maintained highways. Don't know how its enforced, our borough has trimmed my main entrance for me in the past no I do most of it myself.

Hi Kevin,

Sorry about your damage. My neighborhood has a lot of low hanging tree branches as well. A couple of things to consider:

1. Calling your insurance company to discuss may result in their noting the accident whether you formally open a claim or not.
2. Most cities are going to invoke "sovereignty" and will likely refuse to pay for damage. If sued, the case usually gets thrown out.

I checked the Austin, TX ordinances and found they have a 14' clearance requirement for public thoroughfares. From there it got more complicated. The city arborist explained that they are responsible for trees where the trunk is less than 10 feet (roughly) from the street. The homeowner is responsible for maintenance if the trunk is more than halfway over the 10 foot line.

The city agreed to trim the trees but then never did it because of budget and interdepartmental issues. After about 8 requests, I finally had to call a City Councilman's office to get them out and then I had to walk them around the neighborhood telling them which branches I wanted removed. If I hadn't, they would have taken some and left others. Unfortunately, I also had to ask for them to cite several neighbors where they would not trim the tree because of the 10 foot rule.

For the moment I'm able to get to and from home without damage.

All this to say that you may be able to get the trees trimmed, but I wouldn't be surprised if you have to work at it a bit.

You can probably get the city to cut the trees but that will be it. I had to get on our city to keep them cut and also some people up the street that did not want to take care of thiers

We have a similar issue, driving though town we hit a low branch and knocked a hole in our front AC shroud. So we don't go that way any more!!

Some local roads between our house and our storage facility have trees overhanging them. One has a "no trucks" sign, so branches really overhang. We have to swerve around on these neighborhood roads to avoid the branches, or go many miles out of our way to avoid them.

Doubtful our small town will do anything, we have some really terrible roads, too.

I always worry about this. My immediate neighborhood is less than 10 years old so there are no trees mature enough to damage the roof. However a couple of the main roads leading to our subdivision are another matter. I generally avoid one place in particular which is very dicey. It never occurred to me, though, that I would hit a branch hard enough to cause the damage you got. My biggest fear has always been one sharp branch rubbing across the length of the rubber roof like a box cutter. OUCH!!

People always look at me funny or give gestures when I am moving from one side of the road to the other near our house because of this. I had moved to the left side of a street near our house to clear a branch and a lady making a right turn didn't stop and only looked to her left and to her surprise almost had to take to the ditch when she finally saw me. The roads around us may not be truck routes but there is still the need to keep the trees trimmed higher.


Steve
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anyone ever get on their roof with a chainsaw and start cutting when they encounter this?

Kevin, 2 weeks ago we went to the local Casino camping. When I got set up I noticed that the porch lite lense was gone and had tree junk down the side of the Horn. WHAT........THERE AINT NO TREES on my way and its only 4 miles on the main streets in town. Well I was wrong.....there are some UN...maintained trees on a main street. I dont get it though, there is truck and bus traffic on the street all the time. It's nothing I cant fix with a little buffing compound and a new lite. Maybe I should make a call to the city. Sorry about your A/C cover. Maybe you should get a chainsaw and ladder...then just leave the cut branches in the street. Someone will have to remove them. Tooo bad they dont make a noiseless chainsaw, cause you could do it at midnight.

Look on the bright side Kevin, now you don't have to worry about the first accident

When I lost my AC cover I got one on Amazon, $80 delivered. You should be able to buy a fan blade too.
As to the fins/coil, if there are no leaks I would leave it as is.

A few fins bent over like that will not make much of a difference and you stand a good chance of actually doing more damage trying to straighten them.

I carry some trim trimmers in my truck tool box and have many times gotton on my roof and trimmed branches back both at campgrounds and on streets. Keep in mind there is damage liability to the owner of the tree if it does damage to your rig if you can figure out which tree did the damage. I have never had a tree owner complain about my tree trimming and have even had several RV park managers thank me.

jmgratz said:

Keep in mind there is damage liability to the owner of the tree if it does damage to your rig if you can figure out which tree did the damage. I

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Not in Jersey. I had a neighbors tree, that they knew was not in good shape, fall on our cars. Totaled one car and damaged a 2nd.
It was all on my insurance and the insurance company did not go after the homeowners.

In Jersey we can also trim a neighbors tree, if it is over our property line.

jmgratz said:

I carry some trim trimmers in my truck tool box and have many times gotton on my roof and trimmed branches back both at campgrounds and on streets. Keep in mind there is damage liability to the owner of the tree if it does damage to your rig if you can figure out which tree did the damage. I have never had a tree owner complain about my tree trimming and have even had several RV park managers thank me.

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Good idea! Texas has some state parks we visit where branches have scraped us. -- but then again, they also have signs saying you cannot cut or gather firewood, so they may frown on this.

BTW we do the swerve from lane to lane on a few neighborhood roads, less than a mile total, only going about 15-20. I know it must look crazy, but replacing a roof is expensive.