ScottF

Cheers! Happy with it so far on week on

Cheers! I love the way 130's swoop about and wallow like hippos around corners. Great fun!

Our new ride. Taking over for our 2010 Navara which has suffered rear diff failure, propshaft & UJ failure and a chronic inability to get new replacement parts from Nissan. Feel quite at home back in a noisy, cramped, Landy again.

Remember reading this article when it came out (showing my age slightly, here) which prescribes tracing the discoloured wood down the stem from the infected branch by cutting windows into the bark then severing the xylem below the discolouration. There were colour images in the original article and the arborist in question was using a 192T to make very shallow cuts. Apparently it worked, but I would imagine that, due to the speed of spread, you'd need to be watching your trees like a hawk to spot suspicious branch death. http://archive.lib.msu.edu/tic/holen/article/1999feb27.pdf Good luck.

Infuriating to hear about this sort of thing. I don't know what the maximum sentence for an offence like this would be, but I'm guessing nowhere near enough to account for amount of hassle and upset caused. Maybe they should take a proceeds of crime approach to it and seize goods from the offenders to account for the gain from the theft? Perhaps if the offenders have their stuff taken off them (and I just don't believe these toe rags are all penniless cases who need the money to survive), rather than some slap on the wrist they might think twice. Or maybe just use some of the Wile e Coyote-style exploding traps suggested elsewhere in this section of the forum......

Almost accidentally turfed two pigeon chicks out of a nest up a mature lime on Friday. Nest was in a crotch and I was going to loop my rope into it but ended up stepping past it and looked back into the "empty" nest to see two large but fluffy chicks in it. They never made a sound. Apparently they hadn't been told the nesting season was over. I carefully stuffed their nest back into the crotch and worked around them, taking the lumps of dead wood over the footpath out with the Silky. Saw mum returning just after I got down. I know they're "only" pigeons but I still would have felt bad if I'd pushed them out. On the other hand, I've heard squab is quite the delicacy.

Do you offer the chipper/chip box combos in the uk?

These internet sensations come too thick and fast for me. I've only just got my Harlem Shuffle routine wired.

In my experience honey fungus is associated with very quick death in wellingtonia. Hard to see pics on my phone but does look like honey fungus. That weep is pretty worrying too. I'd be watching the tree for top dieback very closely. Have there been any fires or any other disturbances near the tree in the past few years as far as you know? You generally see wellies with honey fungus die standing in short order, so not a wind throw issue so much unless ignored.

Interesting topic. Now that we're moving back into contracting after a longish hiatus behind desks I'm interested to see how people are taking payments now that cheques are less in use (I haven't written one for years). I don't expect people to hand over cash on the spot, but I don't like the idea of completing a job and then leaving site empty-handed either. The Paypal card machine looks interesting. I like the idea that the funds would go straight into the Paypal account and transferred out. Anyone on here used this system?

Name and shame. Like it! Well done and I hope you get weighed in.

These days I take immense pleasure in turning down work for big building firms that used to treat me, and many other smaller contractors, like crap. Against my better judgement I took on a small job for a large building firm in February who were undertaking a build on behalf of one of my long-term clients. I'm still waiting to get paid. What's even better is that, as part of the "after the fact additional information we need before we can pay you, but didn't need for you to actually undertake the work" documents, they asked me to draft a letter assuring them that I don't use invoice factoring. I don't factor, but I can certainly understand why people working with these guys would. I guess the company didn't want to deal with someone with the resources to apply the pit bulls and actually get paid on time.

PTI seems to increasingly be coming up as a benchmark of competence for those inspecting trees on tenders and job descriptions, and I tend to agree, provided it's coupled with some other vocational training (ND Arb, Tech Cert etc). If you're willing to pay the fee, take three days off work, undergo some pretty vigorous training and undertake an exam that's far from a cakewalk, then it suggests that it's a discipline you're committed to. Your point that a tree surgeon "knows what to do" may be right, but as one who works both on the tools and as a consultant I'd say that a contractor may come up with a different solution than a consultant would for a variety of reasons. Who's to say which is right? A consultant solely providing advice may be willing to be less risk-averse than a contractor who doesn't want a callback on a tree they've worked on, for example Not all consultants come out of college never having had experience of real practical arboriculture, although I share your concerns about those who do- and it's a growing trend, unfortunately.

Cheers, Slothster

Your MP wouldn't intervene? Mine would and so would many others', I expect.

The planning case officer is not obliged to follow the advice of a landscape or tree officer and often don't. The landscape or tree officers are effectively consultees whose advice forms part of the totality of the application and should be seen in that context. They do not have individual power to effectively veto any application that comes across their desks. If the case officer's being as intransigent as you say though, it sounds as if you'll have to appeal. At least you'll get a fresh, if not necessarily impartial, set of eyes in your case. Good luck.

I'm afraid this "future pressure to fell" argument is far from uncommon. It's one I've had to deal with in both applications and appeals and is unfortunately almost impossible to counter. It depends on the unquantifiable attitudes to trees of persons unknown acting in an unpredictable way at some unknown point in the future. You could equally argue that these unknown future occupants (assuming it's not you) of your house will adore trees and care for this lime with bottomless pockets. It's a planning cop-out. If your proposals confirm with the requirements of bs5837 and you've taken suitable arboricultural advice and any mitigation steps can be enforced by planning condition, then the LPA should not refuse on tree grounds. The decision to allow to fell or otherwise rests solely with the LPA and they should take these responsibilities on board rather than issuing such cop-out decisions. If the tree is to stay, then they should ensure it is protected during the build and not harmed following it, as they should with any other tpo'd tree. Rant over

Whatever repair it needs, get ready for a possible long wait for parts. My Navara's a late 2010 and I've been waiting 3 week for rear diff repair parts. They're still on back order now and won't be in until the 7th of July. Total wait for repair bits from Nissan, around 7 weeks. This is a 3.5 year-old truck. Bobbins. Back to the green oval as soon as I get it back. The whole repair would have cost me around £400 in a defender, and parts would have been in next day.

Need 3-4 climbers and groundsmen for work in North Wales, near Bangor. Likely around 3 weeks' work. Self-employed with own saws and PPE preferred. Work starting towards end of June Please PM with details.

These two-wheel tractors are well underrated in my view. We do wildflower ground prep, cutting etc with the BCS equivalent of one of these and it's brilliant. How robust is the general construction of the Grillo device?

Navara didn't concertina quite as badly as the Isuzu, but both suffer from the ladder chassis stopping and the body and passenger compartment keeping going. Nasty.

I see now. Syngenta has been working on the delivery system for around 7 years, I gather and have been doing field trials in Switzerland for 4 years or so. The chemical itself is already in use for a number of other applications, so it's effectively an off-label application for the UK they're applying for, but it's still taking quite a while. They're expecting approaval before Spring 2015.

Chortle

What?