muldonach

Who does this woodland actually belong to - if it is yours you could take the long term view and decide that putting a roadway in is an investment for your children. If it does not belong to you seems that it should be the owner who puts this in - if it is not worth his while it certainly is not worthwhile for you. However since you express concerns on security I assume that you are not the only person who has access to this area? Seems to me that you need a main extraction road to skid or skyline to - note that use of double drum winch described above is just another form of skylining. without a roadway that will stand up to regular use you are shovelling the proverbial uphill. I had the cost of roadmaking on this kind of ground quoted at £40 per meter with rock free to quarry on site several years ago. You can get membranes which will apparently reduce the amount of rock you need but you are still talking 50cm of crushed stone. The only other option is to use enough of the timber to keep you up but you can figure the cost of your time for doing that. I have to say that skidding a couple of sticks at a time with a crawler over a 400m skid route does not sound too productive Sorry this is not exactly helpful but forestry has gone to the use of heavy brash mats, 8 wheel drive and band tracks for pretty good reasons. Big thing on this ground is not to break through in the first place

How deep is the peat? If it is more than a few inches you are wasting your time with a wheeled vehicle and there is no way you will get enough brash off lodgepole to keep you up. it is unlikely that putting stone in will be economic even if you can quarry on site As you probably know very well when you do pop through it will be messy, we have ground with 3-4m of peat (level) and are thinking in terms of a skyline or winch equipped harvester. We have been in with a 13 tonner cleaning ditches and it put years on me with all possible birch and willow and any necessary lodgepole going under the tracks Crawler worth a try I would say - steel tracks greatly to be preferred. Have rescue equipment handy on site before you need it

Not just scam e-mails - we had a phone call a while back from someone claiming to be HMRC - at 6 in the evening! Aye Right

I would have a look at the paperwork that comes with the felling licence - I just processed a licence which will involve about 5000t and have paperwork requiring me to contact highways before starting - also specified routing over minor roads.

Either sort it properly or hand it back untouched - from the description you have given it has not exactly had a lot of tlc - if you do an economy repair it will eventually give up the ghost - and guess who will get the blame. Do you honestly think your local legend will be sitting in the pub telling his mates how you did the best you could for nothing but he ran it to destruction. You have two options here - you can be a robbing barsteward or a useless barsteward

whatever agreement you come to do absolutely nothing until you have at least £600 and preferably the full value of the job in your hand. Cheers mac

Is it available for hire?

It is always worth worrying about how you propose to support yourself and family in later years. From what I read the offer of a company pension is pretty damn rare these days, it is not something I have ever had the offer of although I paid into an industry pension scheme for a period and got severly rooked when I left the industry. A pension plan is good provided it performs well in the long term The questions for me are:- Who is running this scheme and how is it invested / performing? What is the likelyhood of me staying in the scheme long term and what happens if I leave early? Is there an alternative - for example would the company pay their contributions into a SIPP if I had one? Personally I would tend towards managing my own money if at all possible Be very careful of anyone in a suit and if anyone tells you they are offering "free" financial advice ask them straight out what commission they are on and who is paying it - they are obliged by law to tell you

All good stuff and you probably will not like what follows;- My advice would be to think carefully before inviting the public in, as you have pointed out there is the question of liability to comsider. Of more importance however is the effect that the public may have - by the sound of it one of the things that make this place a little special is that it is unspoilt. It does not take many people to start making a mess, particularly if the place is not policed / wardened or generally kept an eye on. What is access and parking like in the vicinity - is there access off a road or do you have to cross someone elses ground to get to it? If the latter then I would suggest you discuss your plans with your neighbour(s) before actioning them. Sorry to seem negative but there are some places up here that have cause to regret the open access rights that the great scottish public now have. Cheers mac

It is possible to be too dogmantic - wood does season as cord, just not nearly so fast as split timber does but it does dry, especially if it is lifted off the ground a little and stacked out in the open. At the end of the day the drying rate is a function of many things, which includes ratio of surface area to volume. Small diameter cord will dry much quicker than thicker timber. One of the biggest moans that felling and forwarding contractors have is weight loss in the stack whilst awaiting uplift. If you have got firewood at 18% then it is seasoned.

Go back to the two identical firms in post #1 Picking figures out of the air assume running costs for each are £200/day, each also wants to make £200 profit per day. Firm A is not VAT Registered so his chargeable rate is (£200*1.2)+£200 = £440/day Firm B is VAT registered so they reclaim all VAT making their dayrate £200+£200 = £400 but they now have to apply VAT to the total which means they write an invoice for £480 of which £80 goes to HMRC. The effect of reclaiming inputs and charging on ouputs is merely to pass the VAT on inputs along to the end user. You are quite correct that a non-VAT firm can offset the entire cost of inputs against profits, however that is not quite the same as being able "to claim it back against tax" Cheers mac

I believe you will find it is just about double the right answer - use the mid diameter or half the height and you will get close.

He has to pass collect VAT on the £100 fuel because it is a cost to his business, if he does not pass on all such costs to his customer then he is going to lose money. In exactly the same way tyres & repairs etc add up to the cost of running his vehicle, yes he can reclaim the VAT on those inputs to his business. However on order to make a business viable he must pass on all costs and apply a profit margin (obvious I know) but he MUST apply VAT to all outputs except where they are specifically excluded. Your arithmetic is correct but no the result, the basic premise is wrong (imo) Cheers mac

Er ... no To state the obvious you do not "claim tax relief" on costs - you pay tax on profits, HMRC does not pay you money if you make a loss, (although you may be able to carry losses forward and offset them against future profits) The non VAT reg chap has paid out £120 - he will have to charge his customer that to break even. The VAT reg chap buys £120 worth of fuel on which he can reclaim £20 VAT as you say. He will have to charge his customer £100 to break even on which he is obliged to collect £20 VAT and return to it HMRC. Cheers mac

I for one would be very interested to see a justification for the highlighted statement. If we take two traders as described where their costs are the same, margin is the same, then as far as I can see at the end of the year there is no difference between them. However as you say, if all else is equal then the domestic customer will normally take the cheaper option - which is the VAT free one Cheers mac

Could have been a lot worse - could have found it curled up with ma denying all knowledge and taking nowt to do with it - looks like a good strong lamb! How many more to come - another 7 weeks for us (I hope)

http://http://www.ireland-forestry.com/NewsandDownloads/Thinning%20Services%202011.pdf should be ok for a while yet

I would not mind being a fly on the wall when he asks his local DMG for a deer management plan and attendance and performance records for his 1 Ha plot! This is a wind-up yes?

Jon I would be happy using a block with an Ultimate Load Limit of 10t or more - often described as Working Load Limit etc. I put my tuppence worth in because the thinking in some of the previous posts looked a little suspect, but the conclusions looked ok - The Clarke unit indicated is more than strong enough to use with the wire on your winch, although the screw fitment securing the hinging cheek to the block looks vulnerable to damage if you are dragging logs through stumps etc. Cheers mac

There are - or at least there appears to be - a couple of misconceptions in this thread which may be potentially dangerous. The winch is stated to be 6t line pull, normal good practice would be to use a snatch block with a SWL (Safe Working Load) of not less than 12t however such a block will be large and heavy and is only really required in a lifting operation. The unit offered by Clarke is listed as having an Ultimate Tensile Strength of 16t that does not mean it can or should be used at anywhere near that loading. Some factor of safety should be applied. In reality however I would imagine that the winch in question is fitted with a wire of approx 12mm diameter? Such a wire will have an MBL (Minimum Break Load) of about 8.5-9.5t when new. Accordingly the snatch block should have at least that MBL - which in this case the Clarke unit does. In addition the 6tonne rating for the winch applies to first layer service only and falls away rapidly as the drum fills with wire. It is (with apologies for advising on eggsucking) really important that the anchor point for the block is similarly stronger than the wire, in the event of a failure of the anchor point the block tends to land in the winch operators face

Norway spruce is not a roe deers food by choice as if other sources of food arnt present within their habitat they will only take the young fresh growing tips on the leaders thats why the trees become of a bonsai appearance. Roe deer are selective browsers and if a food source was introduced they prefer in there habitat then they would leave such harsh food source alone,more consideration needs to be given in creating a more controlled environment when it comes to deer. the situation can be helped in actually creating areas where deer come to feed on brambles wild rasberry,ivy, bog rose and succulent fescues that they would eat before any other food source. If such effort was made by forresters incorperating the deers needs in the forest designation ,then culling zones can be created by bringing deer to controlled areas where the numbers can be controlled to accepted levels, unfortunatelly little is done in consideration to wildlife managment its all to do with obtaining grants and money or it has in the past. Things are changing but not quick enough If I was establishing a deer lawn in a forest then Norway Spruce would be my conifer species of choice, and in my experience roe do not leave any planted conifers alone, it is a question of when, not if, they are browsed, particularly when planted in small plots in otherwise open ground. The OP has sought advice on protecting a 1 Ha plot so his opportunity for diversionary planting is to say the least limited, and the amount of damage he can withstand very limited. Essentially he can chose between fencing, rifle or individual guards, on a plot of this size I would not advise reliance on culling. If the conifers are left open planted then I would advise breaking with conventional wisdom and not weeding along rows - leave the grass etc to grow and restrict intervention to mowing between the rows. Cheers mac

Norway spruce are the deer equivalent of Thortons Chocolates - they will smell them a mile away and call all thier pals in as well. I can remember years ago being in a wood just outside Inverness where Norway had been interplanted with Pine in racks - the norway were bonsai, just one in an entire rack had got above the deer and we measured it at 65 feet - the rest were 2 foot tall and it was a long rack. 0.6m guards are no use whatever against deer, period. The best way to protect a 1Ha plot is fencing, regularly checked. Cheers mac

Our priorities are completely aligned - when it comes to a choice between a perv at Tia Leoni or a discussion on ancient woodland who cares about trees!

Depends on the type of sling - if it is an endless loop then yes a 2m loop = 1m sling. If it is single part with spliced eye in each end then no 2m = 2m Cheers mac

If it looks like a rat and smells like a rat - it probably is a rat. Got all the signs - avoid