Rupe

Yes, you can be SE on short contracts, of course you can. But the OP doesnt say its for a 2-3 month contract, it states full time job vacancy.

Yes, thats what I meant.

Full time employment or self employed? Cant have both! If you want someone to commit to full time work for you then offer them employment and paye etc. It wont cost you any more, just spread what your going to pay per day over a whole year to allow for holidays etc and pay the tax for them. Self employed means they dont have to turn up week in week out, so if you need full time employ full time.

Im about as chilled out as I've ever been, not sure how I managed it as I have definatly been stressed in the past, and anxious. I remember when I started working for myself and realised the responsibility I was taking on, to myself, my co workers and customers (and I suppose their trees) but I'm now very much more laid back, it will all be ok. Get a rec climb sorted Paul, we need some ZZ action, but spring weather would be nice.

Nice one! Make sure you register first and get your bar code printed. And post your time here.

Well that was silly!

Anyone do park run today? I got a new PB of 22.03 woop woop!

My green teeth might be different, vermeer call them yellow jackets but and they only turn once, (so two sided). Because some teeth are further forward on the wheel than others its possible to rotate their postion before turning them to the second side, then after turning them you can rotate their position again, so you kind of get four goes with each set. I think more expensive, because you change/turn them sooner but you get such better performance from the machine as your not waiting for total bluntness before you can be bothered to change them. So, on site if it goes blunt it takes maybe 15 minutes to sort out using one small socket wrench.

What machine is it? On my vemeer 252 the torque setting is massive! I had to buy a 3/4 inch drive torque wrench. And to loosen them off I needed a long bar with a scaffold pole over the end! Changed them to yellow jackets (green teeth now) so no need to loosen the pockets, just change the tips, much better. Agreed, the straight teeth are not vital, they clean the debris away but dont do much cutting, and you can see this by the little amount of wear they suffer compared to the others.

Why will it suffer from heave from rotting roots?

Yes, but the concern was about subsidence due to rotting roots. That wont happen.

Subsidence/heave is caused by intake/lack of intake of water in clay soil areas. Nothing to do with rotting roots! Thats just rubbish! A house wont subside because some roots somewhere nearby are slowly decomposing!!!

Not at all! Hasawa is for employees. Nothing stopping a person going out to make a living lopping trees.

No. It's not illegal!

I think a common problem is that people think the fire should be roaring inside to give off lots of heat. So they leave air vents open, it looks great but you get through lots of wood for little heat. Woodburners are all about stored heat, not instant heat and the stored heat can only be given off at the max rating of the woodburner, so a 5Kw burner can only give off 5Kw no matter how fast the fire is roaring. (or a percentage of 5Kw depending on efficiency) So keep the fire going as slowly as possible, otherwise all the heat goes up the flue, as long as its not going out it really doesnt take much to keep it hot and gving off close to max output. Similarly the fire surround and chimney breast do all need to get warm and then the store heat as well and that all helps, so keeping the thing going for long periods is good IMO. Oh, the other thing, has she got a convector burner or a radiant heat one? The convectors never seem very hot.

Thats all I did. No welding. The angle iron was from the old fire surround that came out when I widened the fire pplace for the burner, its fixed on three sides of the chimner and the steel plate site above and the pressure from the flue pressing down on it means it not going anywhere.

Self employed at weekends? That makes no sense at all!! Why do you need a self assessment form, if your paid Paye then you pay enough tax to keep HMRC happy, the weekend stuff is just pocket money from your mum or gifts from you gran isnt it?

NPTC's are not qualifications anyway, so they do not make any of us qualified. Without any NPTC's I would be exactly the same at my job, but I would have had less doors open to me along the way.

How can you have "wages" and need to set aside your tax? If your on £75/day 5 days a week then it sounds like your employed. Self employed is for when you make different amounts of money from different jobs from different people.

No! Dont pay for chestnut, but if you got some free it would burn if mixed with something else. Oak is not comparable to chestnut, thats the best and the worst your trying to compare there.

It annoys me too! But I think my ego wont let me tell them how much it annoys me, i.e. I make out like its not an issue, but if the could just give me the bloody cheque now it would be very nice, thank you. We did a job last week and got an actual cheque at the end of the day, it was the first time that has happened in ages and it made me go home happy!! Agreed most of my stuff is commercial and La's etc so I dont expect immediate payment, but for domestic stuff its amazing how the cheque book dissapears at the end of the day. Still, I wont be putting payment terms on domestic invoices (or quotes) its all about personal dealings and pleasantries (in my opinion) but yes, it does annoy the hell out of me as well, but so does not getting a cuppa etc etc.

Any old sheet of steel will do it. Mine is about 2mm think, got a steel fabricator to cut it to size and cut out a hole for the flue to go through.

Why would you want to do cutting as well? Thats work?

Im using poison ivy ATM. I think velocity would be better. Oval shape is not the end of the world, it does return to round fairly easily so I dont think its getting worse and worse.

I do one every year that provides up to 3000Kgs of clippings. The money you get for it not actually yours though, it could belong to the owner of the yew? Depends how you contracted the work in the first place. Also I'm sure its no where near as high as £40/200kgs £4 pound maybe. The price has gone down now because all the research has been done, and one company now makes the product. There was a time when companies were competign with each other to bring a product to market and the price of clippings was higher. The one company got a product but it took a couple of years to get it through testing/certification and the price for clipping dropped to ZERO. Now that its being manufactured again there is some demand for clippings but not much. Interestingly the Chinese planted millions (yes millions) of yew trees, especially to get the clippings, but they tried to get them to grow fast and the clippings were not right, so good old british yew clippings from old established hedges are still the best. In the case of the hedge that I trim, the owner pays us nearly £3K to do the work, and she usually gets about £200 total for the clippings which she gives to charity. No ones going to let you loose on their prized yew hedges so you can make money from their clippings!