Tool Tuesday - The Portawrap
It’s Tuesday, which means another look at the tools Red Mountain Rigging uses to get the job done!
As climbing arborists specialized in hazardous and difficult removals, rigging pieces of the tree to safely bring them down and avoid damage is integral to the job - after all, it’s in our name! Key to the efficient control of pieces as we bring them down is a tool called a ‘Portawrap’.
A portawrap is a portable rope friction device we can use to control the descent of limbs, tree tops, and large pieces of wood as we cut them from the tree. This allows us full control over where and how the piece lands so as to ensure there is no damage to your yard or property.
The old-school method for controlling the descent of materials involved wrapping the rigging rope around the trunk of the tree, generating friction as the rope pulled around the trunk during descent. The challenge with the method was in predicting the appropriate amount of wraps to get the friction required, as every tree is slightly different in bark roughness, etc. The portwrap provides a predictable and unchanging friction surface to help take some of the guess work out of rigging.
The portawraps in our fleet accept from 1/2” to 3/4” rigging ropes, which must be of a specific design to ensure appropriate friction is generated. With a working load limit of 2000 lbs (900 kg), these devices can give us control over some seriously heavy loads.
Friction is generated by wrapping the rope around the pipe as many times as necessary to gain control. There’s no magic formula here and it can be a bit of a learning curve to help understand how many wraps to apply, but the rule of thumb is one full wrap provides adequate friction for one person to lower 330 pounds. And the portawrap is designed for single person use. More wraps equals more friction, therefore allowing one person to properly control the descent of the piece.
We also have the ability to lock off the portawrap by placing half hitches over the retention pins at the end of the pipe. This gives us options in complex rigging situations where we may need to capture a load overhead, move it clear of an object and then initiate the descent. These techniques come in handy during storm clean up or removing trees snagged up into those around it.
Our portawraps are an integral piece of the rigging puzzle, and our crews use them routinely to ensure safe and efficient removal of heavy loads at height.
Written by Sean Sterna - The Rocky Mountain Arborist & Used with Permission