Reguarding all "felling" questions...

Don't do it this way!

I've seen that video before, and I believe it was staged. But who knows, there are people stupid enough out there to actually do that!! I'm skeptical about giving any advice in regards to felling anymore. At least not on the forums. Lots of things that can go wrong, its really hard for me to give accurate advice by looking at a couple of pics.....

Not to mention, you just don't know who may be lurking on the site and take it as the gospel......not good at all.

Yeah, seen this one before.

Should have tied the tree off.. When we did back yard residential leaners that big that would destroy something if things went wrong,, we "Always" installed two pull ropes... Real cheap insurance....never lost anything.. Same thing with having insurance,,, I always told people I do my work to do zero damage... even if something gets damaged and insurance pays for it,,,I would never be recommended again..or asked back for future work.. So safety was high on my list. Sometimes we'd even climb the tree and rope out any back weight to keep things more in our favor at times,, depending on how much big wood was hanging off the back..

There is a better(worse/) vid out there somewhere of a huge spreading oak falling and turning a house into kindling.

The cuts on the stump show that someone thought that with clever cuts they could fell the tree where thay wanted. No one could judge the direction the tree wanted to go with all of those branches.

Trees go in the direction they want to if you don't go up and trim branches and/or attach ropes.

I assume I can influence the direction of fall by a 30deg max and never cut anything big near the house