Big 'Ammer

Repollarded, surely?

Have a word with my mate John, if you need anything assessed or witnessed. Yorkshire Deer Stalking

You won't fit a four cylinder lombardini in the smaller 222. The 222 turbo had a longer engine compartment.

Thanks for the positive comments chaps. Thanks Hama for a good set of comparitive fungi pictures. So I still havn't seen a Fomes, one day maybe!

We had our dog chipped, he still eats about the same but goes much faster.

I'll send you a bracket Hama. We'll have to go back and shift some of the timber out the garden anyway. It was that wet it would have turned it into a ploughed field, we have had constant rain since and the client is happy to leave it and let it dry up for a couple of weeks. So you think its Ganoderma pfeifferi? It didn't look typical Gano brown to me. But I know little about fungi and am interested to learn. To me it looked more like Fomes from the description in the book and some of the images on the directory here. Feel free to make use of the images.

Fungi porn for Hama.

Some more.

Some pictures of a beech tree I was called out to on Monday evening. The owner had been away on holiday and on returning had noticed a crack had appeared in the tree. There was a crack in the main fork at about 2m down to the base, the fork was included and there were two large fungal fruit bodies at the other side. I think they are Fomes fomentarius, but I have not seen that one before and may well be wrong. Hopefully the forum fun-guys will put us right. We went the next morning to secure it with some ratchet straps. It wasn't that windy, but you could get your fist in the crack and it was opening and closing by a couple of inches. I have little doubt that if we had not strapped up the tree it would have failed before we could have got started on it. TPO'd tree, so onto the LA with our intention to remove promptly. The forecast for Wednesday was atrocious and it it turned out to be correct, so Thursday was planned for the removal. Not that big a tree, but the location was awkward with more than half the canopy over a one-way street junction with parking spaces and a lot of pedestrian traffic with a busy chemist and doctors surgery at the other side of the road. Underneath, a listed wall and in the garden paths and borders with tile rope edging that the owner was keen for us to avoid. Once we had cars shifted and traffic management in place it was a careful cut and chuck dismantle, periodically twitching all the straps up as weight was removed. A bit faffy with the timber, as there was little drop zone for the rope edge tiles. Rigged three larger bits of timber over the wall and then pulled some bigger sections off with a tag line, removing a strap at a time from the top down. Left two straps in to keep the two halves together, then felled it with a pull and a lot of wedges to lift it up. There was hardly any sound wood to make a hinge and hollow and nail riddled to boot. Anyway, got it down safely without incident. Stein PTT two way radios proving invaluable once again, making the job and the TM much easier.

We took down a beech tree on Thursday that had split down the middle. Got called out to look at it on Monday evening and you could put your fist in the crack. It was opening and closing by a couple of inches in the wind and it wasn't that windy at the time. Went back first thing Tuesday and put four ratchet straps in it to hold it together till we could get to it to safely dismantle with the mewp. I have little doubt that had we not strapped it up, it would have failed before we had got to it. I'll put a separate thread up about it in the pictures section, later on.

Nice picture set. Is the guy in the second picture really tall? He should kneel down to put the gob in, or he'll get a bad back working like that all day!

20's plenty, just.

The solutions are to work within your vehicles capabilities, change the type of work you do, or how you go about doing it working very carefully within the rules, take another vehicle to the job, or get a bigger vehicle and all that it entails.

The movement in the top of that did not look pleasant. Agree with Reg, I had to pause it a bit to see how particular bits of rigging were set. A well planned excellent job.

Your chipper is unbraked and has a MAM of under 750kg, so you are ok to tow it and load the truck up to a GVW of 3500kg. If you towed a chipper over 750kg, you would have to subtract its weight from your 3500kg truck MAM and see what you had left for payload of chips - Not very much!!! Thats why most of the popular chipper manufacturers offer sub-750kg chippers nowadays to fit within the regs.

Cheers Rog. Ok, you can all breathe out now, its the same as is was.

Rog, you are of course right. I was referring to the fact that drivers without a pre-1997 license need a trailer test to tow a reasonable sized trailer for the purposes of practical tree work in the real world. Or they need a trailer test to carry something in the towing vehicle. For example, you can tow a one tonne chipper behind an LDV or whatever fine, but when you have put more than a few tools in and a couple of guys, you are not going to able to carry any chips! The actual circumstances where someone driving without a a BE license, within the allowances, is going to be any use day in-day out, are few and far between in commercial arboriculture in the UK, IMO. Anyhow, how do the new regulations differ from the current ones?

These new regulations don't appear to be that much different from the current ones, or I am missing something? If you have a post 1997 license you have to do a trailer test anyway at the moment. Frankie, sensible move.

Looking good Mark. For not a lot of money you could get a local engineering firm to weld you up a flange, bracket and clamp for the chipper spout, so you can fold it down rather than having to take it on and off every time you go through the shed door.

I can't believe that someone would spec a chip body of that size on a 3.5 tonne truck. It must be 7-8m3, and then go to the expense of having it coachbuilt for a 750kg payload. Take off your three guys, ladder, saws, fuel and kit and signs etc, then the chipper noseweight on that looooong overhanging body and there won't be much left. Seems madness to me.

Teleporter, muck grab, matches, .....

http://arbtalk.co.uk/forum/members-only/41211-oopppssss-hhmm.html#post640295

Whereas, I'd recommend reducing it and then keeping it tidy with an annual trim. Because I have a tracked MEWP.

Think he means snigging chains, not saw chains.

Give them some work, that'll brighten 'em up.