Advise needed on Storm damaged tree, should it stay ?

[Wonky]

Good evening all.

 

as I'm sure there will be better peeps out there that know a lot more than I will ever know, I’m looking for some clarification on this tree, 

so storm Eunice is what did this, 2 large branches , the upper one being approx 16” diameter and the lower being 18” 

 

so the question is how safe is this tree now it’s lost about half of the main trunk, the tree is approx 70’ tall 

 

hopefully you can see from the  pics 

btw, that’s a 20” bar on a 036 in the last pic 

 

cheers

 

[agg221]

22 hours ago, openspaceman said:

I'm glad you are on board with the biochar idea but there are plenty of cheaper ways of making it,

I use a pit burn for really small stuff which is much cheaper (essentially free), although less efficient. It doesn't work so well on material over about an inch in diameter, particularly in mixed batches, and it does take an enormous amount of post-processing time, separating out the char from the brown ends and getting it to a sensible form for charging and application. What I do not have to factor in is labour - the advantages of retort processing are that 2hrs or so of the process are freed up and at the end it is a self-limiting process which means you don't end up with a pile of ash unless you watch it constantly - my thought was that this might make it better suited to a scenario where waste was being processed down to char for use rather than sale as the labour cost is then offset against capital investment, ie people can be getting on with something else while it runs. I would be interested to hear of other, cheaper ways of making it, particularly since I may then be able to improve my own approach, particularly for sub-1" material.

 

21 hours ago, dumper said:

unessesary co2 production it doesn’t lock up carbon and seems to deplete the amount of 02 avaliable  

I would be interested to see what sources are giving this information.

 

My understanding of the accepted view is that, whilst biochar is by no means a miracle solution, it can add a number of advantages, the extent depending on particular circumstances.

 

As a material, it absorbs water and adsorbs nitrates, both of which are released at a slower rate, so it reduces leaching. and rate of water loss. The particles are largely stable and weather slowly, so depending on the particle size applied, it can have an effect on soil structure. This makes it useful on heavy clay, where the larger particles create a more permeable structure, reducing hard pan formation with consequent water run-off, and on free-draining sand and river silt the retention of water reduces the need for irrigation and the retention of nitrates reduces the need for multiple applications of fertilizer. This has an effect on production cost (less time and sometimes less total nitrate applied) but has an additional benefit when farming in nitrate sensitive catchment areas, where applications are limited. If you happen to make your allowed application and then the next week there is a sudden downpour on your free-draining river silt field, you cannot apply more and your yield will be severely compromised. The total impact on yield in western farming is small, because the usual solution is to use more inputs (fertiliser and water) to optimise production. Where biochar appears to be useful is less in increasing yield over that optimum, and more in achieving the same yield with a reduced level of inputs. It is expensive as an initial set-up cost, and does not pay back against alternatives on a realistic timeframe if you buy it in as a raw material, but it works economically if you use your own waste streams to make it, meaning both reduced energy costs and substitution of the time/effort/cost vs. what you would otherwise have done with the waste.

 

The other question is locking up carbon. If you treat the total amount of carbon associated with plants as a closed cycle (which isn't true as more of the planet gets built on or cut down for cattle farming in the Amazon etc) then in theory, carbon goes round a fairly short loop, from CO2 into plant matter and then released as CO2 again when the plants rot down or are burned. That cycle is from around a year to up to 200 years, with a few outliers for longer-lived trees. If you convert the plant matter to charcoal, it no longer rots so lasts an extremely long time, certainly thousands of years, in some circumstances much longer. The process does release some CO2, but only on the same sort of timeframe that it would have been released anyway by rotting or burning, and it's less than would have been released that way as some is now retained as charcoal. That means that to re-grow, plants now need to take more CO2 from the atmosphere, lock that up as carbon and release the free oxygen. On balance over time, that means more of the carbon on the planet ends up locked up as a solid (just as it was when it was coal before it was mined and burned) and more of the oxygen remains in the atmosphere as oxygen, rather than as CO2.

 

I don't think this is going to be some magic process but on a local scale for anyone with the right sort of quantity of material to justify doing it, it makes sense and has a net benefit. It seems to work at the level of interested individuals on the market gardening scale. Yes - it would be great to capture and use the heat too, but haven't quite got there yet with smaller systems, in part due to the capital requirement and in part because they are not run consistently enough. The Pyreg system works but is phenomenally expensive and needs a complete district-level culture change to run district heating schemes alongside it.

 

Alec

 

 

 

Edited February 27, 2022 by agg221

[Stere]

Think someone on here worked out the initial cost of the (then available) small scale retorts wasn't worth the larger investment over using a ring kilns taking into acount the bonus of the increased yield of retorts but the negative increased cost & the estimated retort/kiln lifespan/number of burns?

 

 

Doesn't factor in enviro benefits.....only payback on investments......

 

 

Might of being in the  TVI thread when he decide  charcoal wasn't really economical/or worth the effort V firewood?

 

 

 

 

[openspaceman]

1 hour ago, Stere said:

Think someone on here worked out the initial cost of the (then available) small scale retorts wasn't worth the larger investment over using a ring kilns taking into acount the bonus of the increased yield of retorts but the negative increased cost & the estimated retort/kiln lifespan/number of burns?

 

 

Doesn't factor in enviro benefits.....only payback on investments......

 

 

Might of being in the  TVI thread when he decide  charcoal wasn't really economical/or worth the effort V firewood?

 

 

 

 

Best shift this off Sean's question and on to its own topic

[Chipperclown]

Leylandii x driveway = Fell! Basic's.

 

Have a good weekend all!

[Wonky]

On 04/03/2022 at 18:19, Chipperclown said:

Leylandii x driveway = Fell! Basic's.

 

Have a good weekend all!

I guess your right, well that’s if you get permission to possibly trash anybodys boarder fence to the track\driveway,, if you look where I,m cutting with my 036 &20” bar you can see a very nice layered hazel f hawthorn hedge. The other way the hedges/ bushes are bigger.

also the tree is limb locked to the next tree..

 

so-the choice is many.. I had thought of all the possibilities 😉

 

if I get chance to fell it .  I will add here and pics..etc..

 

but from what I’ve heard the council TO were asked to look at the park /area.. 

so I will ask,,,and try and find out the TO thoughts on thread (this) said tree. And where it fits I the(council’s) priority list 🤫

Edited March 6, 2022 by Wonky
Bits inside (. )