Rupe

Co's that can't do it in house & are willing to learn are worth working for imo Sure thats great, but they are earnign while they are learning! If you have the skills (and gear) do you want others to profit from that and learn the skills that you have paid for (in time and money)???? Send them on a cours if they wan to learn stuff and get them to get the the cheque book out if they want the gear on their jobs!!!! Charge the fricken earth from them in the mean time!!

Sounds like a normal day out at Bratletts then!?

Didn't mean to accuse you of anything, just making observations. I guess though if you own a chipper then using it for an hour is no big deal, but I see that hiring one for that is pointless, but you must try and compete with those that have chippers on a level playign feild if you can. Customers love a cheaper quote but in the end they benefit more than you do, if you can be 5 quid cheaper than the competition and chip up the debris, thats better than 50 quid cheaper and burning, that 50 gets to stay in the customers pocket which is not where it should be. There are a lot of chippers around. Surely that wouldn't be the case if fires were completly ok? I'd rather not have bought a chipper! We used to have a lot of fires it seemed the normal way to do things back then.

No agree with you that in some case it is the best solution. I just meant going for the fire option in order to undercut someone doing it "properly" is a bit off hand IMO. I'm sure there is a no burnin g of commercial waste ruling? Agreed you can burn domestic waste but council prefe you not ot etc as you said. I've done it once and had an evironemntal health officer out readign me the riot act. and he said I had to factor in cost of chippers and manpower to get debris to the chippers etc. We got off with a warning that time. I've bent it since by leavign waste for a customer to burn, then its not my commercial waste.

So does that make it ok to quote for jobs using fires and cut out the comapnies using chippers etc. or do you think its just to be used when absloutly necessary? Burnign the waste from a tree job in someoens garden is not the same as them havign a domestic bonfire for there own waste.

Maybe we should all get rid of our chippers then, I'd rather just carry a box of matches! And then we are all on a level playing feild again.

Well legally you can't do that. You need to factor in cost of chippers etc becaue that is what proffessional tree companies do. If they give a quote based on doing it properly then so should you. Bending the rules so you get the job over another firm is off hand IMO.

What are you guys referring to as a "controlled burn" Am I missing the point here?

You cant burn commercial waste. Farmers can't go and set fire to a load of old plastic bags to get rid of them, factories can't go out the back and burn a load of waste produce whenever they feel like, and arbs can't charge money for a job and burn the waste, you have to find a way of removign it and cost that into the job. Having said that, you can burn domestic garden waste at home as long as you don't cause a nuisance. So you could twist this rule a bit and leave waste for a customer to burn themselves? You can also get permits form the councils for burns where there really is no other feasable method.

I think its doing well. Its tough enough to withstand some knocks here and there. I have it clipped into the holder which is velcrod to the helmet, not signs of it ever coming loose. Steve suggesting wrapping insulting tape round the bracket to ensure it stays on but I have not doen this, and that means I can get it off the helmet (and back on again) without taking the helmet off. Battery life is theonly problem. Energiser Lithiums are great, two days use easy. Everything else I'ver tried has been rubbish. I've nto tried Duracells yet though. ASs far lengevety, I think I'll get bored of it before it wears out and it will only then get used for special jobs, or mountainbiking to try and record some crashes!

Thanks, that makes sense!

Heres the next bit of video. It continues on from the last bit but the snow in the feild has magically dissapeared! Then we switched to a larger rope and tied it on to form a loop for the DWT. [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nmNU5ZnnD4]YouTube - Beech rigging work 4.wmv[/ame]

Of course you should charge more. I actually agree with the above comment that you shouldn't be working for companies that don't have rigging kit. As we have discussed before, the company who quoted the job are the ones doing the job, and they have to fulflul the risk assessments etc. Getting a "subbie" in to do rigging if they do not carry the tickets themselves is not actually sub contracting the work. The company who quoted are still fully responsible for the works carried out and must be able to risk assess and insure the rigging element of the job. Now if comapanies have rigging kits and tickets and they want an additional kit for extra jobs, or if freelancers prefer to use there own then thats fine, but rigging for companies that can't do it in house is bad form IMO.

Thats the one that I've seen Rhys. It seemed ok. I remember someone saying something about it being for the Swedish market only, due to regulations there??? No???

Cool, I get ya! One thing I missed is that even though you a halving the load by putting it on two lines, you are also potentially lifting a bigger load in the first place! Therefore the same care is required to not exceed rope strenghts and of course anchor point strengths, as you would in any rigging situation.

Also you only double the force on the anchor pulley if the two ropes are vertical. In my diagram above the overall load is shared between 2 pulleys so the loads not doubled on either. But your right, and thought must be applied to all rigging systems. In my diagram the tail of the lowering rope is attached to the same stem as the blue pulley, so the half load that that par tof rope is holding IS adding to the forces on that stem. Sideways loadign on branches and stems is a major concern, far more then doubling the straight line pull on an anchor. I'm not great at expaining the maths side of things but I can visualise it all very well (maths nerd me). If you think its not quite right then don't do it. Can you not move the caravan?

Absloutly agree. You work out the best method for every job, and DWT off the smalles remaining stem might not work so you wouldn't use it.

Your right, and part of the cunnign method is in my last post. Another thing though is that the load is shared on the two ropes above it, so if the load is doubled over the pulley it is still only equal to full load and not double it as it would be in normal lowering.

Totally agree, loading is an issue, especially if the two anchors are far apart. This is where some maths would be helpful, but I'm not gonna overcomplicate stuff. Basic rules of thumb is how I work and the rule here would be that if the stuff you are liftifng is that big then you should (in theory) move all you pulleys lower down the tree. You might start a dismanlt with pulley as high as possible but when you switch to bigger ropes and lifiting big stuff then you should think about movign the pulleys. After all the big stuff is lower and closer in to the tree and so the pulleys can be too. The only limits I've found with the grcs are rope strenghts and rope slipping. 13mm can be wrapped more so doesn't slip but 16mm can only get three good wraps. Plus mine is a bit polished now.

Another great advantage of this is to create a "virtual" rigging point between two actual points. If you have two stems and the ideal drop zone is between the two then this sytem allows you to lower into that drop zone, even if you don't need the extra MA.

Not sure if this has been discussed here or not. I learned it from Tom D at Tree Buzz. Many people have probably used it, but I just thought we could confirm the terminolgy as DWT instead of the many possible names for it. Like with SRT, DdrT, Drt, RaDs etc etc. its best to all know what we are on about. DWT, is a method of doubling the lifting power of your riggin device. Either GRCS, Hobbs or Regs new one, of for fiddle block lifting sytems that some use in conjunction with capstans and other none lifting lowerign devices. By attaching a pulley on the object to be lowered, and passign the rope through and tieing off high in the tree you creat a 2:1 advantage at the load, this is thne in addition to the liftign advantage of your rigging device. So the GRCS has an mechanical advantage (MA) of 44:1 (mine does, the newer ones are higher I believe) so adding a DWT give you 88:1, so your doubling the power available or halvign the power required depending on which way you see it. A simple method is like this...

That sounded really patronising of me! Do I need to explain it!!!!!!! What I meant is should I put it somewhere sererate from here! I think I will, we can discuss the merrits of it without derailing my own thread!

No worries, its been a pleasure to do the work and the videos. Its been a learning curve for me makign the videos but I bought the camera specifically for this job so I'm makign an effort here but may not do much more in the future. Its ashame the job is takign so long, but if I had the choice I would not have started it in January! March would have been much nicer. It is in a very exposed place, and was painfully cold up there on monday as the wind was gettign up. Anyway, I ran out of batteries while doing the big lifts so missed the best bits! Once I realised I put some more in for the few I had left. My extra groundie did some filming from the ground too but I have just realised that he did it all with the camers sideways on so it all needs rotating! Then is will only fill the centre of the sreen! Never mind I will get on with it. The lift I did using the Double Whipped Tackle (DWT) method. Do I need to explain that seperatly??

Is it a requirement in sweden already or just an idea form husky?

It been used three times so far, all on sound enough beech trees so can't answer your question. All I know is that if the heartwood is very decayed, then you would cut through it easier so you might not be so knackered and that would make up for the BD not working? Does that make sense? i.e. on sound heavy wood you need all the help you can get and the BD helps. If the wood is not sound enough then you are already having an easier day so you don't need the BD as much. Every cloud and all that!