Tom D

Good thread, it's not easy to think of something, TD Trees is big enough now that I can be off the tools full time if I want to so theoretically I could carry on right through to retirement. Wether I'll want to is another matter. like others have said, when you're partly off the tools your body suffers, you get weak and then you get hurt when you hit the tools again. I've not really found the answer to this problem yet. And the business suffers when I'm on the tools as running things is pretty much a full time job these days..

We have been splitting logs lately, the timber has been lying in the yard for a couple of years and now we want to get it converted into logs to finish seasoning indoors so we have been busy with the firewood processor. Looking at the pile of logs and thinking about selling it all next winter has led me to consider the best way to market and sell our produce. Since Trading Standards and the Weights and Measures Act 1985 have little to say regarding firewood we are a bit in the dark when it comes to quantities, packaging and pricing. With most goods the law is quite clear and very strict with serious penalties for suppliers who sell goods in quantities or measures outside those prescribed in the Act. Firewood however is a bit of a mystery, I suspect that it falls under the category of solid fuel, but its hard to confirm if thats the case. However it is viewed officially it would appear that the market is wholly unregulated. Logs are sold in a variety of ways, here are a few of the most common: By weight; usually by the “ton” however this is almost never confirmed by any kind of weigh bridge ticket something which is likely to be illegal as far as the weights and measures act goes as one thing they are strict on is selling by weight. There is however a fundamental problem for the consumer with buying timber by the ton, this is simply that the wetter the wood the more it weighs. So there is an obvious incentive for the supplier to sell unseasoned wet wood as this will significantly ‘up’ his margin, if he bothers to weigh it at all that is! Supermarkets have been dicing with the same issue for years when it comes to meat, hanging the meat performs the same function as seasoning logs, it dries out a little and whilst the flavour may improve, and possibly the price per kilo, the lost moisture is lost profit since they bought the meat by weight in the first place. They have got around this problem by injecting the meat with “stuff” to bulk up its weight, and apparently this is ok with trading standards! This has gone on for years of course, in times gone by bakers used to be infamous for adulterating their flour with fillers such as bone meal, chalk, sawdust and even gypsum! Thankfully at the end of the 19th century laws were brought in to standardise what could be called flour, maybe its time they took a look at bacon! (all that white stuff that comes out as it fries is the supermarkets added filler). So back to logs, selling by weight simply encourages the supplier to sell wet wood, and wet wood is not good for burning, not only does it produce little heat but because it burns at a lower temperature the combustion is incomplete, so gaseous tar and soot condense in your flue potentially leading to chimney fires. It would perhaps be ok to buy logs by weight at a known moisture content as happens in the wood chip for biomass industry, but that rarely happens. By far the best way to buy firewood is by volume, this way you get what you pay for, they may still be wet, but 100 logs are still 100 logs wet or dry, so now the incentive is with the supplier to sell a quality product, assuming he wants to keep your business that is. So the next problem to arise is quantifying that volume, a cubic meter is a relatively common unit and should be the ideal but thats not always the case, which leads us to what is perhaps the most common way of selling logs….. The load. So what is a load of logs? Well, anything you want it to be really, and this is where the industry really needs some guidance from the government. The load could be a bulk bag, but these vary in size from 2 cubic meters down to less than 0.5, or it could be a vehicle of some sort, trailer, pickup, 4×4 or even a car boot. From the consumers perspective how are they to compare one ‘load’ with another, does the back of one suppliers transit van compare favourably with another’s trailer? Who knows? The upshot is the poor consumer is left in the dark. With weights and measures regulations so strict on other industries, including coal and smokeless fuel, why is it that logs are still in the dark ages when it comes to consumer protection? The answer may lie in the fact that during the industrial revolution we abandoned wood as a fuel, only to re-discover it in the last 10 years or so, and when the laws on weights and measures were made firewood just wasn’t on the radar. But these days it is most definitely back as a serious contender in the fuel market, sales of wood burning stoves have soared thanks to the carbon neutral credentials of burning wood over fossil fuels. (don’t get me started on the carbon credentials of imported eastern european logs though!) Its time for HM Government to wake up to the burgeoning market in firewood and apply a little common sense to the way in which our logs are sold. We could do with a standardised moisture content for firewood, so that customers can expect to be able to get a certain calorific value from their wood, at least if its advertised as ‘ready to burn’ anyway. Then theres the weight / volume issue, logs really should be sold by volume, and all prices should be advertised by the cubic meter, irrespective of the size of vessel used to deliver them. This way the consumer can confidently compare prices from one supplier to the next. We have found that selling by the cubic meter we loose out to other suppliers selling by the bulk bag, our £60 per m3 has less appeal than a £50 bulk bag even though that bag may only contain 0.6 cube, making it considerably dearer, what do we do, sell unseasoned wood in order to cut our prices further, or try and skimp on the amount we sell?. Sadly the lack of regulation is currently driving quality down as firewood producers engage in a race to the bottom to stay in the game. So if you agree with the views expressed above please share this article on Facebook with your local trading standards office, yes they all appear to have FB accounts! You could also share it with your MP. You never know we may end up with a fairer firewood market in the not to distant future. For some further reading here’s a helpful PDF from the Forestry Commission.

You could be right, it's hard to tell much from a grainy video. Perhaps there was a pocket of rot at the failure point and the timber was actually more solid. If it had been allowed to run that probably wouldn't have happened.

I'd do it again, but I'd be sore the next day, that really was a big tree, I seem to remember it took a whole day of climbing to get it down. However a pic of video never tells the whole story, the tree in question had many fungi present, merip, gano, porcelain, and a few others, however there were a few leaves on some of the lower limbs and one smallish branch at the top, that was what I was tied to. As you can see in the vid some of it was extremely brittle, had it all been like that I wouldn't have gone anywhere near as high and I would have smashed off even bigger bits.

Very scary video, he'd of been fine if he just bombed it out though. As for the climb high thing, I wouldn't fancy it, I once threw a line up a big dead elm and when I gave it a tug to test it I ripped out an 8" thick section. That could have been nasty. I have dismantled plenty of dead trees though. This was one of the biggest.... didn't rig it though..

I have 20+tons of oak sitting near Kinross..... I want £55 per ton delivered to you if you're not too far.

Kevin, I'm genuinely interested that you get so much work from door knocking, you must have a very trustworthy face and the manners of a vicar. Are you a typical door knocker: "excuse a me luv your fern tree needs trimming" or a door knocking arborist : "excuse me madam, I noticed that your Tilia cordata is in urgent need of a cobra bracing system and a mycorrhizzal inoculation"?

560 crane Stevie?

CS30 is a prerequisite so there must be a chainsaw element????

I have had a few jobs from FB but then I have had 50 odd click throughs from FB to the website, so maybe FB is better than I think..

Shhh Bolam, I'm trying to build an air of respectability.. i should have mentioned door knocking. Funnily enough ugh I knocked a door the other day, there was a big dead lime in the front garden and I was interested in what killed it.. they weren't in, I just got sone confused air b&b customer lol.

Why not rank the poll options here, we might all learn something from this. here's mine. website 50% word of mouth 20% previous clients 20% local press 10%

Has anyone done this one, myself and 3 of my staff are coming up for some refresher training, as it's been a while since I did a ticket. I was thinking that this wouldn't be a bad one to do, as a refresher, I don't see much point in just refreshing for the sake of it, I'd rather do something new... So, what are people's thoughts on this one?

If you can find a willing examiner you can book a test only, then it's only one day off per ticket...

We have a relatively short term contract and require a couple of subby climbers for the next few weeks, either experienced or not, all we need is the aerial rescue qualification so this is a good opportunity for someone to learn a bit on the job. There is no chainsaw work on this site, it is for an ecological survey. Please call us for more info. 01368 830 776.

I thought someone would recognise the tree. It's huge !

Stevies spot on, an ifor might be ok but not a big grain trailer, the drawbar weight will be too high. We tow an i for behind the mog on a towball mounted on the winch on the 3pl. I wouldn't want anything bigger on it though. I do tow a trailer behind the heizo but only on the road when it's empty.

who are the notable absences? I'm not the most active so I haven't really noticed..

Why not post a PM to an administrator naming the culprits with perhaps some examples of what you are talking about? I think the site managers would be grateful to receive this and it would help with the future direction of the site. It is quite possible that the behaviour that you find offensive has gone un noticed simply because the admin are looking at things from a different perspective.. It certainly can't do any harm.

Some thoughts on our green infrastructure and its use as a fuel source. The benefits of our urban green spaces are well documented, we know for example that they aid heat amelioration, improve air and water quality and improve urban drainage helping to prevent flooding. They are also responsible for improving our health and well-being; encouraging people to spend more time outdoors improves physical fitness and studies show beneficial impacts on cognitive function. Trees raise house prices too: estimates vary between 5% and 30% increase in value for houses in leafy areas compared with those where trees are absent. They also harbour urban wildlife, which again has a positive impact on our wellbeing. What we don’t seem to do is consider our urban green space as a sustainable fuel resource. Yet huge quantities of our urban trees are felled every year, with the vast majority of this timber finding its way into the firewood market. So why don’t we notice this denuding of our green spaces? Well, it seems we plant an awful lot too, its hard to find figures but its pretty safe to say that we must be planting trees at pretty high rates too. Garden centres sell huge quantities of trees, shrubs and hedging every year, and these are the potential problem trees of the future, ready and waiting to be recycled as sustainable firewood….. While Mrs MacDonald at no 57 was having her overgrown tree removed Mrs Jones at No.28 has been to the garden centre and bought 3 poplar trees… The public sector plant a lot of trees too, we have planted around 500 amenity trees in parks and on streets in the last year for local authorities, and thats just a drop in the ocean overall. With the benefits of green infrastructure being well recognised planners are keen to ensure that any new projects incorporate an element of green space, and trees are usually involved. Most large infrastructure projects have a significant element of tree planting involved, and in some cases new urban forests are being created. Its easy to see a bright future for our urban green spaces. So just how green are our cities? Take a look at satellite imagery of Edinburgh, there’s definitely more green than grey,or if you live in the city just climb one of the city’s many hills, heres a view looking north from Blackford hill: Looks pretty green doesn’t it? So what about cutting them down and burning them? well clearly it wouldn’t be good if we cut them all down, but if managed sustainably surely our urban forests are a resource not to be overlooked in our push away from fossil fuel energy? Which begs the question; are we managing our urban forests sustainably? I would say that in my experience of Scottish towns and cities that we are. In 15 years of working in arboriculture I have not seen any noticeable change in the numbers of trees or the levels of green space in Central Scotland, The Lothians, The Borders, or any other areas that we cover, also I suspect this trend can be seen across Britain as a whole. Let me know if you think otherwise. So how much biomass fuel are our urban forests producing? And what does that equate to in terms of energy? Well again figures are hard to come by, TD Tree & land Services have removed around 500 tons of useable biomass from the Edinburgh area over the last 12 months. If we use that as a starting point and imagine that averaged out each of the 30 or so professional tree surgery companies operating in the Edinburgh area had removed 200 tons of useable biomass then we have 6000 tons in total. If this was broken down into 2000 tons of logs and 4000 tons of chip the monetary value would be around £500,000 once processed, not bad! That would yield around 22.2 Gigawatts of heat energy, which is a lot when you consider that Doc Brown’s DeLorean only needed 1.21GW to send it back to the future…. Actually it would probably only heat the entire city for a couple of weeks but then a couple of weeks is better than nothing an would still be a 4-5% saving on total energy used. If every city did the same then we would have gone a significant distance towards our carbon reduction targets. The only question remaining is are we putting all that green energy to use? I’m not sure that we are, while most tree surgeons sell their timber as firewood most wood chip goes to composting, ending up being used as mulch on paths and allotments. In environmental terms this is a waste. It would be good to see more of this being used as a fuel source, it has its problems as such though, it tends to be of differing quality, in terms of size and consistency, as well as moisture content. None of these problems are insurmountable though, chip can either be screened or burned in boilers that can handle the uneven particle size, and chip can also be dried to a moisture content that allows more efficient burning. Until we tackle these problems though we will still end up wasting a large amount of the green energy that our urban forests produce, boiler manufacturers need to come up with boilers that can handle stringy leafy chip Furthermore if someone built one that used spare heat to dry the chip in its chip store as it made its way through to the burner then they would undoubtedly be a top seller, in most cities tree surgeons will dump chip for free as they are keen to get rid of it, someone with a boiler that was capable of taking fresh chip and drying it before burning would likely have a free source of fuel….

I have 20-25 ton of oak sitting at Milnathort in fife.. not to far away.. I'm wanting 45 per ton roadside. It's pure oak nothing else.

FYI I just put 2 sets of mog tyres in arb trader..

We use tree smart arb from kaarbontech. its pretty good once you get the hang of it, but its 2.5k per year so you need to be doing quite a lot of surveys to justify it.

I have a spare saw so I might try the other carb. I also have an ultrasonic cleaner so I could give that a go..