Paul Barton

Sarcasm is hard to read on a forum - especially given the original poster has only made 3 previous posts. Discussion often starts with someone stating their view anyway.

It's not the best analogy but: what's the difference between a 'bin man' and a 'waste management facilitator'? In essence arborist and tree surgeon describe the same job. One is a common term and one is an American term (Americans don't tend to know what a tree surgeon is). I would agree with central-services point above though; that uneducated and unskilled rogue traders are unlikely to use the term arborist when describing themselves so perhaps the term arborist adds a bit more weight to our profession.

Last time I checked this was a discussion forum.

Sea levels will rise more due to thermal expansion of the water mass. Or so I heard.

That is weird. Fishponds Road is a busy road that has lots of double deckers up and down it all day every day. I can only think perhaps the bus lurched sideways in a deep gutter or drain or something. Must have been a nasty shock sitting upstairs.

I am looking for a tree surveyor for 2 weeks work in Birmingham, starting on Monday 24th October. You will need to have a Level 3 qualification in Arboriculture, your own transport to site and good tree identification skills. Payment will be per tree and you can work all the hours of daylight you want over the next 2 weeks to set your own wages. For details please ring me on 07866 773373.

Cranfield University's website does some good soil reports. They definitely give an assessment of ground movement potential but I can't remember if they give you actual values for plasticity index. https://www.landis.org.uk/sitereporter/

Arf arf, this made me chuckle. It's a bit smutty so don't watch if this might offend you.

I love pubs. A proper local pub is hard to beat. However, pubs are in a bad shape at the moment in my opinion. So many pubs are run by management companies or large breweries that use lack lustre tenant landlords. I used to live in Suffolk and can honestly say that on the whole that county has some brilliant pubs - the best I have been in. Having recently moved to Worcester the outlook isn't so bright. I was just commenting to my wife today that Worcester has alot of restaurants and a few bars but not many proper boozers. The 'nightlife' seems a bit chavvy - all I am looking for is a comfy and friendly pub with well kept ale. Having worked in pubs in the past I often dream about running my own one day...

Great Ash reduction Matty.

Hi Simon, The size of compressor you need will depend on the nozzle you purchase with the air-spade. The one we bought came with a 'standard' 150 scfm nozzle. I have found this to be a pain in the ass as according to the manufacturers guidance a 105 nozzle requires a 175-185 scfm compressor which is bigger than most you can hire from your local tool hire shop. The general rule is that the compressor should always be larger than the nozzle. If I were you I would get the 105 scfm nozzle so you can run the air-spade on a 125 scfm compressor. These are readily available from most tool hire companies for quite cheap. I recently got a price for the smaller nozzle and it came in at £300 so it's worth choosing right first time! However - I cannot comment yet on the difference in performance. Obviously a large nozzle is going to shift soil quicker... Re the hoses. Ours (from Fletcher Stewart) came with hose couplings called something like 'california connectors' (that may not be the correct name). These DID NOT fit on to a standard hose connector so we had to get a new connector fitted on the end of the short piece of hose that comes with the air-spade. Check this before you buy. Hire companies only charge a small fee for extra hose with a compressor. I normally get two 8 foot lengths for about £10. Hope that helps (and wish I had asked someone all this before I bought ours!!).

Depends how wide the job spec of the manager is. If it includes finding and quoting for the work that can often pay for itself.

Seeking my revenge on the trees and people of BS9!

I lived in Westbury on Trym until last year and I think I know which trees they are. It is nice to see local people rallying together in a positive way about trees. However, nobody has done anything wrong in this situation! I think there is a major flaw in the way TPOs are currently administered, not helped of course by the constant redundancies and cuts in the relevant departments. TPOs are nearly all served in a REACTIVE manner - i.e. in response to a perceived threat. This is partly a fault with the legislation that talks about the 'expediency' of a TPO. However, in my opinion this is an arse about face way of protecting decent trees. If councils undertook a better study, a landscape character assessment of sorts, that identified key species and specimens they would better preserve the visual amenity of treescapes in a pro-active way, instead of constantly reacting to whispers on the wind of proposed development, or applications to fell trees in Conservation Areas. If the residents liked the trees that much before, why didn't they request the council to place a TPO on them before now?

Here is a link to the new RFS learning resource about trees. Enjoy! Learning | RFS

Best of luck Glenn!

So is Cloud 1 for Mac only or Windows users as well?

Cool. Wonder if he'll get evicted by the council too?

They normally show you a small parcel of land and then give you a 'scenario' on the question paper. For example, you have a patch of grass with some scattered trees on it and the scenario is that there is a proposal to build a new car park of a certain dimension with an access road leading to it. You then need to survey all the trees as per the BS, recommend which can be remove and which should be retained, and draw a tree constraints plan showing the root protection areas. You can then recommend where the best location of the car park should be once you have decided which trees can be felled and where the RPAs of the retained trees are. You may also need to draw a tree protection plan to show where fencing and/or ground protection will be needed. So, in essence the brief will probably be: - survey all the trees and record the data - produce a scaled tree constraints plan (and tree protection plan) - write a short report of the main recommendations and precautions. And all in about 1.5 hours!! But remember.....the unit (as far as it was when I did it) is called 'Trees and Development' not 'the BS5837 unit'. Therefore it is entirely possible that you could get a scenario about utilities and NJUG guidelines instead! I don't think this has happened before but it is posssible.

Ha ha, nice vid! What make me laugh about most 'smooth climbing vids' is that they always seem to show the climber swinging from limb to limb on a nice high un-obstructed anchor point. I would like to see more vids of smoothly advancing your line/throwlining and footlocking up a tree. Any monkey can swing around!

Ditto Skyhuck's suggestion. You might like to also consider planting a successor to the tree soon so that when you eventually have to remove your existing tree you already have an established replacement.

Acorn Environmental Management Group (used to be Acorn Tree Surgery) are looking for good staff. Tree surgery site clearing West Midlands UK tree surgeons Call Kevin on 0800 0933898.

Hard to tell from the picture to be honest. Does the gunge smell funky? Water doesn't cause rot - decay fungi cause rot. In fact water pockets can help delay the onset of decay because they exclude oxygen. Perhaps post some better pics on here or ask an experienced tree surveyor or consultant to give you their opinion in person.

Don't go tipping waste to retaliate. Our industry already has an image problem and actions like that don't help. Try a small claims court like anyone else.

How's this related to the Localism Bill?