We remove hazard trees and clean up storm damage across Lilburn, where 1970s split-levels and ranches sit under tall southern red oaks, white oaks, hickories and aging water oaks. Many lots slope toward Camp Creek and the small streams that feed it. The City of Lilburn sets its own tree rules, and addresses outside the city follow unincorporated Gwinnett rules, so we check which applies before quoting. For a tree on a roof or a limb hung in the canopy, call at any hour.
Fifty-year-old hardwoods and the limbs they drop
Builders here cleared only what the houses and driveways needed, so the oaks and hickories that were young trees in the 1970s now tower over the split-level rooflines. Hardwoods fail differently than pines. Instead of the whole tree tipping, a single limb tears out at a weak union, a hollow water oak drops its top, or a long horizontal branch over the driveway snaps under wet summer leaves.
The warning signs are usually visible from the ground if you know where to look: dead branches in the upper crown, cracks below a fork, mushrooms or conks at the base, and bark falling away from a section of trunk. Hypoxylon canker shows up on oaks stressed by drought and root damage, and armillaria root rot weakens hardwoods from below. A risk check sorts out which trees can be pruned and which need to come down as hazard removals.
When a storm leaves a tree on the house
When Tropical Storm Helene soaked metro Atlanta on September 27, 2024, saturated clay let whole trees tip onto homes across the region. Most storms are smaller than that, but the jobs look much the same: a limb through a roof, an oak across a fence and driveway, or a broken top hung in the canopy above a deck where nobody should walk until it's down.
If a tree is on your house, stay out of the rooms under it, treat any line it touched as energized and report it to Georgia Power. We start by taking weight off the roof from the top down, lowering each piece rather than pulling it, then leave the roof clear so your roofer can tarp it. Our first-hour checklist lists what to do before we arrive, and emergency removal runs around the clock.
Lilburn rules, the town center and the greenway
Lilburn's town center has younger trees along the streets and in the landscaping, but the residential streets running out from it are where the big hardwoods stand. Inside city limits, the City of Lilburn sets its own tree rules, and we look them up for each address on the first visit. Outside the city, unincorporated Gwinnett rules generally let homeowners on a developed lot remove trees without a permit, unless the tree sits in a buffer or another protected area. Our Gwinnett County page lists those exceptions.
Lots that back onto Camp Creek and the greenway that follows it tend to slope, and stream buffers along the water can limit cutting and ground disturbance. On those lots we keep machines on the flat, lower wood uphill and leave the bank as undisturbed as we can. The same 1970s hardwood canopy runs across the county line into Tucker and east toward Snellville, where the lots get bigger.