Mr Ed

Steve, just to throw this into the equation... If your thinking new, I would recomend buying one of our universal attachment grinders with a miniloader. This will be a far more versatile piece of kit than just a grinder, as with the right attachments you can save a lot of labour.

GREAT thread. Interesting customer, he sounds very much on the ball if he wanted it doing for £1000+vat, as quite a few on here (myself included) were putting £950+vat (ish) on the job. I earn plenty of clear thousands, but not through doing domestic treework with basic equipment. I can earn good money utilising my excavator to sort stack and load timber and brash, because I'm not paying 10 men's wages to do the same work - and I can be cheaper than the man doing it without heavy equipment. My point was, that even putting out a tubgrinder at £125 per hour will still not earn you back a grand a day. Most big hire firms will charge out a 22 tonne excavator with driver for under £30 an hour, and thats a machine cost ing £70K

I love the whole interest in firewood. Calorific values, sustainability, production, management, its all great stuff. And I still maintain Alder coppice is the greatest firewood ever:)

To continue with the crane theme, On that beech tree I would spend an hour at the most lifting down the trunk, and getting it away from site in 12 foot lengths. Without a crane its going to take 2 hours minimum to chunk it down, another 2 hours quatering all the rings, loading them in the tipper, more time sweeping up your sawdust, loading tiping etc. I will be long gone whilst your still chunking down. Ergo, I will earn far more per hour than you will, with less staff overheads. Put it this way - Harvesting contractors can put timber to roadside with a £1/2 million of equipment for a 1/4 of what hand cutters can. how long do you think they would be in business if they thought - 'hey. I've spent all this money on a harvester, I deserve to charge much more than a man on a saw' Basic laws of economics...

I buy my chain by the reel, and seem to have lost my box of joining links. Anyone know where I can get fresh packets? I need 3/8 and .325

Coppice is the oldest and best way of sustainably managing and producing firewood.

Crane = same money with only 10% of the effort. Mani, in one way I admire your atitude BUT... I can only say that you will probabaly suffer a great deal in the coming recession. I think its unreasnoble to earn £1000 a day profit out of domestic treework I have run Tubgrinders, 500hp chippers, forwarders, excavators and harvesters - mega ££££ worth of kit and rarely earned that kind of money.

You must have very little competition in your area. As for rushing around, I would do that comfortably in a day without breaking a sweat with 2 men.

Dave, I would imagine you could just about crane out the tops on that tree with your palfinger?

My thoughts also. Probably 10 m3 of chip in that tree, and about 6 - 7 tonnes of timber. Easy if you have a crane, but if not, its a LOT of sawing and loading and sweeping up piles of sawdust....

It makes me so annoyed that people will buy the house with the beautifull tree, then want to get rid of it. You should have given them a slap Kevin! As to price, £900, but i'd do it for £600 if I was desperate...

Yes well, its easy to say that about the US. its easy to fell any problem tree when you have a vast tree resource. In europe our population density's are much higher, and our urban forest resource under constant threat. If we followed your desire, there would be no urban forest left in European cities, just endless tiny Swedish whitebeam and Rowan.

Let me know when you have a few hundred years of experience. How do you know? since you never practice it, you have nothing to base those claims on. Over here, some of our oldest trees are pollards. When you have quantifiable proof, detailing the 'mistakes', come back to me. And considering you feel that your only management option is fell and replant, whereas I can choose from many more proven management techniques - then I think we have long been outside the box.

Make way girls aloud, there's another bunch of manufactured girls dressed as whores ripping off great old '80's tunes. The Saturdays. How depressingly dull. its not even as if they add anything to the record. Good job they look like sluts really, they have precious little talent. Anyway, in honour of Vince Clarke and Alison Moyet, here's the original [ame]http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=wPiMbg4yVWk&feature=related[/ame]

Now thats what I call topping....

I was working in an adjacent tree to another climber (who shall not be named) on tuesday. I'm certain I heard a quiet snigger just after the branch hit me on the head....

I reckon your first advice was absolutely correct! Nice topping by the way

Haha, you think they are that particular Dean? here's a story for you - A few years ago my Uncle got a call from the Carlsberg / Tetley brewery in Burton on Trent (the UK's biggest brewery). My Uncle owns Fuel Energy Services, manufactures oil storage tanks, and had a large installation and pumping division. Seemingly, the storage tanks for East midlands airport had been breached, and thousands of gallons of Kerosene had poured into the freshwater deep wells that the brewery drew their water from. Long story short, he got paid a fortune to pump the fuel out of the wells, and also got paid to dispose of it. He did'nt buy any fuel for his trucks for a few years after... However, he asked Carlsberg Tetley,what about contamination of the brewery water, and was told not to worry, they just dropped the suction pipes on the pumps below the Kerosene and carried on pumping. They say that for a few months you could get a faint whiff of diesel off every tetley pint....

I can sense (smell) something...

Drella, you have to understand that the US is still in its infancy when it comes to urban tree care. In Europe, we have been pleaching, pollarding, hedgelaying and coppicing since before the founding fathers set sail. There are french Arboricultural textbooks showing Alex Shigo's 'new' pruning techniques that are over 150 years old. Maybe you should open your mind and learn a little....?

HA! I thought that was just me!

You can borrow mine if you want.

Cleaned the ivy off the walls of Schloss Hiedelerg in Bavaria

Worked here in the past, Portmeirion, the italianate village where the filmed the prisoner