Tom D

We've had 70mph+ winds three times this year in scotland, the dammage has not been as bad as you might expect though i have been doing some windblow lately. I think the trees need to be in leaf to really suffer a lot of dammage. I have noticed a big rise in jobs from people who are worried about trees having seen them swaying in the wind rather than suffering any actual dammage. Its a shame when trees come down before their time as it were, the storm in 87 must have been a boon for tree surgeons but I would'nt want to see it again.

I use cannon too, good effort with the salmon. Remember you can make money with sculptures, I have done a couple for the National Trust For Scotland and each was over £2000. You gotta think big though, my first was a giant pinecone which i did in oak it weighed about 750kg when finished. My favourite was a bench that i made out of a single tree, the branches formed the legs so the whole thing was made in one piece despite being 16foot long, its now at Corrie shallock gorge in the highlands. Try to put a portfolio of pics together and send them around, you could well have a nice little sideline. Good luck with it.

Wish I could do that, any idea how it works with LOLER and self spliced ropes?

My tractor insurance is with the NFU.

Here's one off the dealers website, I'm not at home at the mo so will try next week with one of mine.

What you guys need is a compact tractor. I bought one last year and I Honestly don't Know how I managed without it. Its a 50Hp BCS (looks like a miniture ford county) I have an Igland winch and a log splitter for the back of it and a loader with bucket and timber grab on the front. It is small and light enough to be towed behind the landrover and can lift 500kg with the loader. Having a PTO and 3 point linkage the list of quipment you can get is almost endless, Timber trailer, chipper, winch, flail, stump grinder, log spliter etc. The only problem is finding one second hand, I bought new in the end but in reality the finance on this only costs £300 per month and it more than pays for that. Seriously guys its ideal for tree work,It'll do so mucg more than a quad except 50mph .I'll try and get some pics / video and upload it soon.

Dont Know if this will load up but here's a pic of some we did a while back, right to the ground in this case. I know what you mean, these jobs are pretty unrewarding, loads of chip, scratched forearms, sap, and tons of dead leaves left underneath which you have to take away to leave a tidy site. We seem to get a lot of these jobs.

Should have mentioned £1800 is for EL and PL only tools and equipment are separate. Worth noting, if you insure a tractor on its own policy your chipper can be insured on that policy as an implement and is therefore covered in any location even if not attached to any vehicle.

I us ethe skinny red komet one with a snaqphook and an isc micro grab, used to use the thicker blue/white one but the komet is way better. If you're not sure go for a grab over a prussic, grabs are much better at dealing with sap; dismantle a big sitka and a prussik will just stop working. Also a snap is much easier to use than a karibiner although technically its only 2 way locking.

Pedestrians ar allways doing this to us, Only way round it is to have a physical barrier but carrying them is a pain. We hired some once for a big job, they blew over a lot and some tw*t ran over 2 of them. I have been told that if you put a "please use other pavement " sign up and someone gets run over while crossing that you can be liable, not sure about this but you can imagine it happening.

You're not the first to say that, might put them up next year.

I pay about £1800 for 5mil PL and 10mil EL this is for me and 2 qualified employees, expensive? When i get big jobs like site clearence i team up with my mates team, he has a similar setup to me, this works really well.

Thats what i mean. If you lied about your tickets then you're screwed. I bet they didnt ask if you had the windblow ticket, or some of the other more obscure ones. Mine only asked for basic chainsaw, rescue and cs39, I've got 41 but they did'nt ask for it.

Dont know about your insurer but mine says that in order to qualify as "bona Fide" a subby must work unsupervised using his own equipment. This means a ground worker cant be a subby for a climber as he is supervised and is sharing equipment. you could employ a 2 man team as subbys but they would need EL cover for each other. If u employ anyone you need EL by law, the subby rule is intended for a genuine outside contractor like a stumpgrinder specialist or timber haulage firm or something. If your "subbys " work with you all the time they are your employees.

I did'nt mean experience alone. When you take out insurance you musy fill in loads of forms, these ask what you will be doing in some detail, so long as you haven't lied and you ARE working to best practise then you're covered. if they want tickets they will insist on that before giving you cover.

A lot of people get very fussy about the type of wood but to be honest so long as its dry IT ALL BURNS. Horse cestnut does spit badly but on a stove it dont matter. I burn a mixture of all the wood that comes back to the yard and thats what my customers get, no complaints yet and lots of repeat orders. As an experiment I ran my rayburn on pure leylandii for a few days, it worked fine, stayed in all night no probs. I think a mixture is best though especially if you can recognise the species, then you can decide what sort of fire you want when re-fuelling, bright, slow etc.

I have a woodline 16 tonner PTO driven, with a supply of rings to hand you can easily fill a bulk / dumpy bag every 20 mins, i sell this for £35 so this machine easily pays for itself. In reality you have to cut up cord wood which slows you down so my new philosophy is, if its sitting off the ground log it at the job and to hell with the sawdust.

Hi fifer, dont know what your probs are with it but as you say the firebox is small i guess you're struggling to keep it in overnight? we did with ours at first but i have found that using properly dry wood is the key. I know we all think our wood is dry, at least i did, but the only wat to know for sure is... if you get your kitchen scales and weigh 5 random logs off your pile, write the weight on each log and put in oven at 120 to 130deg, overnight in main oven works well. Weigh daily, usually only 2 days, untill no more weight is lost then calculate the lost weight as a percentage of the original, you might be surprised. Another tip i have is to remove the top removable fire brick from the side of the oven, assuming yours is the same as mine. This gives better and faster oven warmups, i think you only need both for burning solid fuel. also clean the boiler monthly when burning wood it soots up really quickly and dampens perfomance. Let me know if I can be of any more help, assuming this was helpful.

How come my "quote" dont look same as others?

I get the feeling that unless you are already experienced in tree work you are not in the club so to speak. people have to start somewhere. I have valued your advice but have come away feeling that this is some sort of exclusive club that no one is allowed to join unless you know what your are talking about. no time for newbies or people asking questions about which they know nothing about. Reading this thread I know what you mean, but once you get into arboriculture you realise that there is so much to learn. Problem is few people realise that, anyone thinks they can do it, this can be frustrating when you have spent so much time learning new things every day. After all very few people would attempt to fit their own gas boiler yet many will prune their own trees, the levels of knowledge required to be a good tree surgeon are way higher than a CORGI fitter. I think some of us guys are a bit up tight on this issue. BUT DONT GIVE UP. I would take common sense and farm type experience over colledge learning any day. The best person has both ( like me ) He he. Go get you're ticket, make the most of the training and ask lots of questions, a good instructor will tell you all sorts of stuff which relates to other courses. Just dont ask it all on day one.

On the Insurance issue, its a worry, I have got the tickets that I can afford but you just can't get them all. Appart from the cost of the courses theres all the time off to consider, not easy when you're self employed. I've not got the windblow ticket but as I only do them infrequently I do have dismantling as I do that a lot. I think windblow was designed for forestry workers who might have to deal with hundreds of big sitkas all on top of one another. I dont have medium or large trees but I fell biggies all the time, does anyone else have these? what are you're oppinions on whether they're worth anything? I think that the insurance companies look for proof of competance in the event of a claim, this could be an nptc ticket or years of experience. Afterall most serious accidents will assesed by a competent arborist so as long as you were working to best practise at the time they should pay out.

Ficus Ill try and do it this week, to elaborate you disconnect the two bow shackles that hold the main d and add the 2 quickdraws, then locktite it back again and attach 2 mallions or in my case the bow shackles off a komet butterfly 2 ( these are available as spare parts) to the other ends of the quickdraws. You can then attach your strop ( ijust use the soft wire core flipline from komet) to these points. Ideally something like the tremotion would be better as this feature is built in but i like the back support you get with the treeflex. It has passed LOLER like this. This mod should be possible on any harness where the main d is attached by shackles, though you must use the quickdraws as having metal and fabric in the same place would not be good.

I have a rayburn 355m (surprised you dont like it fifer) mine's great I have it linked via a dunsley neutraliser to an aarow stratford tf50 and an lpg boiler, by adjusting the stat on the lpg boiler it only cuts in if the woodburners die down. We installed this 18 months ago and are still on the same tank of gas. massive savings. One thing to note, Rayburn are clearly very honest when calculating btu output whereas aarow are a bit optimistic, the rayburn can easily run all 9 rads on its own but the aarow cannot(they're supposed to have similar outputs). I would still recomend the Aarow for its looks and ease of use but go for a rayburn if you can. ps fifer if you want any tips on the rayburn

The birch is shocking but i've seen much worse. Anyone heard of this scam I came across a client who had had 2 quotes from 2 different companies to top a medium sized poplar, the first was £2k!! the second was £900, she was about to accept this when someone recommended us. When I explanned that topping was not a good idea she told me about the other quotes, I asked to see the flyers which she still had; when i saw them they were very similar though the numbers were different. I recognised them as some i had seen being handed out by 2 guys who obviously new each other. The first guy gives a really ridiculous quote so that the second ridiculous quote seems cheap. We did a crown lift and thin for £350.

I have Haix "trecker"? The brown ones, best boots I've had by a long way, nice soft sole realy grips when climbing, good with spikes and totaly waterproof... so far.