ryan sahs

Pricing range?

seal all of your baseboards.  silicone of some sort.  If you have exposed cement. seal it and any exterior cracks at base walls.
Vacuum!!  shower nightly before bed, and change your bedding weekly. The bigger insects go for smaller prey that reside in our dead skin cells/etc. and that cascades up the insect chain.

worst case scenario a torch moved swiftly around will kill spiders without burning down your house.   just use common sense.

As an arborist with tons of experience repairing multiple wood chippers...
Buy new blades for it, running anything through it charcoal or not will not sharpen the blades.
Chipper blades are made from Tool steel - designed to be exceptionally tough. traditional means of sharpening things can barely touch them.

This is a wonderful share! thank you

This is a wonderful thread!!  great information here

Subscribing to this thread as im in Rural Wisconsin as well.

"red maple"

the leaf looks closest to this.

I would suggest mixing up a batch of borax/fat/honey and putting it down on that ant hill.  try to kill it asap

are the mushrooms clustered in the same area by that same root? or are they spread? are they on the northern face of the tree?

to be honest, I am terrible at identifying mushrooms, so I dare not try.
Can you post a picture of a leaf from the tree?

As an arborist.... trees do not heal in the same principle as we believe them to.

Maple trees are not known for having a strong CODIT principle. CODIT wiki And tend to have one or more wall failures in the CODIT process which leads to decay/cavitation.

I do not see your tree as being a very expensive removal by anyone in the industry with skill. I do not foresee you having to worry about it coming down onto your house either.  While there are structural defects, I do not see prominent signs of excessive water accumulation at the root base or soil upheaval.