scotspine1

Swabisch on New England wirecore flipline with micro pulley. In the pic below the flipline is choked to the stem above the block sling during a removal.

Nick, just some friendly advice.......you arent going to learn to footlock in one day, it takes time. Even learning the SRT the guy in the video is using will take a serious amount of effort and time. Learning a technique properly means your doing it right every time instead of half-learning and always being frustrated with yourself and the system when it doesnt work as it should, thats my experience anyway.

John, just wondering.....what kind of Oak is it?

If you want to mill on site in the future tell the customer so that they dont feel they are being misled. As soon as your milling on site the client feels like there's a product being created which you are going sell........in theory the customer could then start charging you rent for using their property as a woodmill.

What about this rig? think they're legal on pavements.....

very good, though did notice on the flashplayer clip the guy dumping the topsoil - soil got stuck behind the wheel arches .

Its the dishwasher you use! not the washing machine!

Dan, Could you fit a ali tipper body like this to a Nissan D22 (aka NP300) Kingcab? The one in the pic below is the D40 Navara. I am looking to have this done in the next few months. I'd need the sides at least double the height of the one below. Basically can a job like this be done professionally for under £3500 inc VAT?

Looking forward to seeing the pics of this job

Mmmmmm....Lets see? Stag beetle larvae accomodation? or tree falling on house? thats a tricky one.

Yep, me too.....reduced to a stump

Maybe. There's always an element of the unknown when climbing and working with trees, we make a judgement based on our experience then we've got to just go for it, otherwise we'd never get anything done, sometimes our experience can fail us and accidents happen. On the positive side of things, this incident will probably make you more cautious as a climber. .

Glad to hear your ok Drew, no doubt your a great climber and have loads of experience in big trees, just wonder if your choosing an ascent method based on wether it's more or less likely to break your anchor point might mean the TIPs your choosing are too small? or you couldn't see if the branch had decay in it? I can identify with using SRT due to heat though. Get better soon

Wouldn't look too much into that Mick, those are the words of Charles Mynors - 'The Law of Trees' author. Was just using that quote to explain to Jellybelly about the incremental effects of tree roots/subsidence leading to permanent damage. Simple facts are the deeper foundations are the better, e. g. if water gets under very shallow house founds then freezes it'll cause subsidence as it expands and contracts. Suspect the 30s house would have deeper founds than your clients but Hama made a good point about the extension on the neighbours house, wonder when that went up and how deep the founds were?

If a tree is causing subsidence a building can subside during the summer as the soil beneath its foundations dries out, and it will rise during the winter as the soil completely rehydrates. This is broadly what does in fact happen, except that the constant movement of foundations causes a gradual long-term settlement (sometimes referred to as "dynamic settlement"). Many buildings - particularly those of a more traditional construction - will tolerate considerable movement, so that there may be no harm done (or some that can be tolerated) But excessive movement of foundations can lead to serious harm to the building above. (C. Mynors) Good question

How did the surveyor come to the conclusion that the Oak is causing the subsidence? have you or your client seen a written detailed report from the neighbour's surveyor? Can the surveyor guarantee 100% that the Oak is the cause of the subsidence? It'd be a pity to remove that tree for no reason, especially an Oak.

Plan B Questionable?!

After viewing Nailer's vid a wise man said this about crown reductions - 'Having done thousands of similar reductions over a 15 year period & seen the results I really dont think there is a great concern of long term detriment to their health. I have observed that most return to similar volumes of foliage in 12 months, but on a reduced framework, or you could say a re-engineered structure less prone to failure due to reduced leveraged loading of branches & stems. Yes, for the most part from the tree's perspective they could happily be left alone at 0%. And when large parts fail thats OK. There is no target present & the parts can lay on the ground at the base of the tree & decompose. But that is not the real world for the urban arborist. As arborists we are ususally working on trees to help a tree fit in with human needs, desires, values & most often, fears-founded or not. Of all the crown reduction pruning I have done, only a handful have enquired asking for it. Most are topping or removal requests, usually founded on the fear of failure of large trees with fairly good structure-eg. not major defects. So if a 15, 20, 25 or even 30% reduction from the tips inwards (not interior) helps to reduce major & secondary lateral branch or leading stem failures, and ease the concerns of the customer, and prevent the next guy from coming along & topping it or talking them into removal because thats all they're good at, then I think a 25% crown reduced tree is quite an ok option. Better than 100% to ground level. Managing trees is a fine balance between health & structure. If you focus too hard on one, you'll likely jeopordise the other. 5% is gonna do stuff all to improve a trees structure & help prevent failure. 50% is gonna detract from the trees health. But that is also not to say that there can be cases where in the trade off of heath vs structure it could still be the best thing to do to save a tree from removal, in some cases. Vigor of the species in general & the individual specimen need to be taken into account. But on the otherhand, a heavily over-loaded, over-extended major scaffold branch may be lost all together to failure equalling a greater % loss than had it been pruned enough to prevent the failure. There is also the potential for that failure to tear out at the union & make a massive irrepairable wound to the piece it was attached, resulting in that needing to be removed too. It does take skill to both sell & perform this type of work compared to the alternatives. I don't know about you, but i'd have a hard time running a profitable tree service if I ran around doing 60 quotes a week and told them all that they should just leave their trees alone & not worry about it because their tree knows best and it really doesn't need us.'

I liked Hama's work on that Copper Beech. Most clients expecting to see a 'hatrack' are amazed that mitigation and structural reduction can be accomplished while retaining the form of the tree but generally they need to be present to appreciate the skill and deliberation that goes into a proper reduction. Hama's client wasn't present during the job so couldn't comprehend what was required to do the work. Its worth remembering when you crown reduce any tree you remove the apical dominance or at the very least mess with the tree's natural growth process and very often, if and when a subordinate starts to take over, a structural weakness or defect begins to take form For a great example of a reduction on a Copper Beech skip to 1.00 min in this vid, some folk might say the inner canopy has been ripped, but then the overall effect is excellent - [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFdVHId5jr4&feature=player_embedded]YouTube - nick bailey tree surgeon manchester[/ame]

Excellent work Hama, You did exactly what the guy asked for and made a very good job of it.

Link to the thread at Treebuzz - scroll half-way down, the pics on the original thread are crystal clear, a tall tree in a tricky situation, worth reading the thread and seeing the pics if anyone's interested in rigging. There's also good pics on page 2 of the thread TreeBuzz Board: A bad break .

Similar to Tod's idea - use one of those hubs to install a highline/climbing system from the ground. Gord used a similar set-up on a storm damage job recently. Very high anchor point was needed to safely dismantle a storm damaged hung-up Western Hemlock-nasty break in stem - tall trees close enough for the highline to be installed over the damaged tree - pics of highline/set-up using metal loop which could be replaced with the hub - ps could someone make these pics bigger without them becoming blurred? .

interested to know was that an Atlas Cedar? and was it Phaeolus schweinitzii that caused the rot?

gonna get into selling logs this year, loads of research, finally got it down to these three choices for processing the wood [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bVAAx3mMKY]YouTube - WORLDS FASTEST LOGSPLITTER[/ame] [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1HZztie5ac&feature=related]YouTube - Unicorn Log Splitter[/ame] [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37gH9SObKVA&feature=response_watch]YouTube - "Worlds fastest firewood splitter" MAN[/ame]

ha ha