Charles Fleurie

SLM521

Summer 2005

Tree Cutting Time

You are worried about the tree next to the house falling into the house. You have no insurance to fix the house if the tree falls into the house. So, you want to get rid of the tree. However, your spouse will not let you get rid of the tree saying it provides some really nice shade and that helps to keep the air conditioning bill low in the summer. So you come up with a compromise of just trimming the tree down to a level that will provide the tree side of the house with some shade. Study the picture above to help you come up with a solution.

You can see the tree is larger than the house and you know your house stands 15 feet tall and is 12 feet wide. You measure the distance from the tree to your house and find that it is 3 feet away from the side of the house.

And your surveying buddy tells you the hypotenuse line needs to be 25 feet long.

What you need to figure out in trimming your tree down, ( you just want to cut some of the top of the tree off) is how high do you need to leave the tree so it casts a shade shadow on the side of the house it is next to?

Here is a link to help get you started on how to solve this problem.