ScottF

I bought an Isuzu Trooper new in 2003 which developed an engine fault at sub-20k miles. I kept contacting Isuzu at garage level, then right up to top corporate level over the three years i owned it, over 10 months of which it was off the road and not running at all with Isuzu not agreeing to honour the warranty. This went on and on until VOSA issued a recall against the car to deal with a KNOWN fault with the injectors in the 3l engine. Even after this was repaired by our local Isuzu dealer it failed again with the same fault within a couple of months, at which point I called the finance company and told them to come and pick up their car. All of this cost me THOUSANDS in replacement vehicle hire, tow truck recovery fees and the fact that I still had to pay over £300/month against a new car which wouldn't run. I appreciate that this engine is now consigned to history with the issues it had, but I will never forgive Isuzu for totally leaving me out to dry when they will have known all along that this engine was a dog and had serious reliability issues. When the VOSA recall came around they even had the temerity to try to make me feel as if they were doing me a favour in repairing it after I brought it up to the garage on the back of a tow truck with sub-60k miles on the clock and no end of trouble. Swines. Does that answer your question?

My current device will be coming on the market soon as I'm looking to upgrade to the latest model. As and when it's available (a couple of months, I reckon), it will be posted on Arbtrader. Cheers

As Paul said, given that you'd need to be trained to use the device, which might take a day, then you might be better to just get someone in to do the scan or scans for you. Another issue is that, unlike a chipper or other bit of plant, they're not super-robust devices, so you'd need to take great care and repairs are expensive. I expect a hire of a device might only make sense over a long period, if you had a load of scans to do. PM me if you need any further info. Best Scott

I seriously doubt that David Lloyd-Jones, who has devised this society, would describe it as anything of the sort. Not to speak for David, but I'm sure he would describe as a different route altogether. The three routes for consultants to take in terms of CPD and quals would be the CAS, the AA's registered route and Chartership, as offered by the ICF. I wouldn't personally think of any of these as "stepping stones" for the other, but rather parallel approaches. If you're interested in consultancy work I'd look at all three and weigh up the relative benefits.

Prune just above the rootstock then dig them out with an excavator.

Not any more

Cheers, Phil.

Thanks to the applicants who have been in touch so far. In response to one query in particular, my approach to qualifications is flexible; I've interviewed graduates with degrees with very little tree knowledge, and conversely I've worked with jobbing arborists who've known the "theoretical" aspects backwards and forwards, so a lack of high-level qualifications shouldn't be a barrier to applying. We're fortunate enough to have a range of training grants available at the moment in North Wales which we'd use to help the applicant to get additional qualifications on the job, if needed. One thing I can't really teach is literacy and numeracy, so the applicant should be able to write a legible and concise report with a bit of training. As above, this requirement shouldn't discourage those from a more practical background- that's my background. In addition to the full-time post, we also have opportunities for freelance surveyors. We've been rushed off our feet for about a year now and that only seems to be increasing, so if anyone is looking for more flexible surveying work, send along a CV and examples of work. Obviously, I'd expect freelancers to already have a certain level of experience in surveying and be more self-reliant. We would be able to offer a desk for freelancers to work from at our new offices when writing up or being audited. Be aware that any freelancers would be subject to the same practical assessment here on site as any full-time applicants would. Cheers

Thanks to the applicants who have been in touch so far. In response to one query in particular, my approach to qualifications is flexible; I've interviewed graduates with degrees with very little tree knowledge, and conversely I've worked with jobbing arborists who've known the "theoretical" aspects backwards and forwards, so a lack of high-level qualifications shouldn't be a barrier to applying. We're fortunate enough to have a range of training grants available at the moment in North Wales which we'd use to help the applicant to get additional qualifications on the job, if needed. One thing I can't really teach is literacy and numeracy, so the applicant should be able to write a legible and concise report with a bit of training. As above, this requirement shouldn't discourage those from a more practical background- that's my background. In addition to the full-time post, we also have opportunities for freelance surveyors. We've been rushed off our feet for about a year now and that only seems to be increasing, so if anyone is looking for more flexible surveying work, send along a CV and examples of work. Obviously, I'd expect freelancers to already have a certain level of experience in surveying and be more self-reliant. We would be able to offer a desk for freelancers to work from at our new offices when writing up or being audited. Be aware that any freelancers would be subject to the same practical assessment here on site as any full-time applicants would. Cheers

We currently seeking a junior arboricultural consultant to be based in our new office near Llanberis in North Wales. Details are on Arbjobs: junior Arboricultural Consultant | Fairley Arboriculture & Landscape Planning Ltd | Arbjobs.com find Arb jobs / Tree work Cheers

Surprised there's no research to support hammerology seeing as it's so widely promoted. Having read the UKTC thread I agree witrh Julian Dunster that a destructive test with a live tree (destined for removal anyway) would be most telling. I'd happily supply the PiCUS and Resistograph for comparison. Perhaps we could do an accurate measure of the stem as a template and allow a number of hammerers to draw out where they think the cavitation is and then use various other means (PiCUS,drills,Thermal etc) and compare the findings. Could be mighty interesting.

Something I sometimes find useful is to define the site extents (red line) and then provide a general tree exclusion zone within that red line so what you end up is the effective construction area. Sometimes when you map individual RPAs you end up with something which looks complicated (from the developer's point of view) to fence off. An example is attached. It's a pretty large site, but the same principle could equally apply to a smaller one. 12-078A Wrexham Gateway TCP REV copy.pdf

Just saw this: Just Received This E-mail From SherrillTree About Petzl ZigZag Failure - The Dripline Again, nothing substantiated as such yet.

I've looked into this before and arbs are not subject to the CIS regulations for general works, only for site clearance works. CISR14200 - The Scheme: construction operations: landscaping

Hi. Where are you based? We're always looking for competent surveyors and are based in Snowdonia in North Wales.

To be fair, it's relatively unusual to see a nice open-grown single specimen like this. Hope you're not about to do something drastic to it?

Amazing insn't it? I kept looking for underlying pencil sketch marks, but he just hits the whole thing freehand.

This may have already been posted, but I thought it was fantastic.

Hi Mate. Anything you commit to paper will "leave you liable" unless you heavily caveat your report. The trouble with endless caveats in reports (which I see all the time) is that they absolve the writer from any responsibility, while giving the client very little expert advice to go on. You also need to consider whether you carry sufficient professional indemnity insurance. £500,000 is the AA's minimum for registered consultants, £1,000,000 is better. From the sounds of things you might be best of offering an informal (verbal) opinion of what needs doing, as you probably do all the time. If the client wants something in writing, for example for insurance purposes, you might be better either getting in a consultant or a colleague who carries the required indemnity insurance. As for the image, I really couldn't say from that shot. If you have any clearer images, as well as possibly pictures of the entire tree, I'm sure you'll get plenty of advice if you post them here. Best of luck.

Don't forget the East side: Montreal, Quebec city, the Laurentian Mountains and then a bit of Nova Scotia action. All good.

I planted some M hupehensis last year that now have that nice gloss to the fruit. If it is, then you can deffo make a jam or jelly with the fruit.

Can never rule out other paths- in fact, as I said in my earlier posts, I'd be certain it was working with something else, but there was no other direct evidence. In the absence of direct evidence attribution is difficult. In this case, the crown was the decider in terms of action being needed, and the owner didn't want to pollard it. In terms of the fact that these things seem to be work in syndromes of usual suspects, I sometimes find it useful to consider the injury, event or vector that might have weakened the tree in the first place when I'm monitoring a suspect one, rather than any one pathogen.

The difficulty here is determining how extensive the decay in the roots is. You can assume by the sheer number of fruiting bodies that decay is well advanced, but I know from experience this relationship doesn't necessarily hold. A PiCUS reading wouldn't be much help, and I've had pretty mixed/inconsistent results from Resistograph readings, too. Given your targets, I think you'd have some explaining to do if you retained it and it failed.

Here are some shots of the sycamore which was riddled with Kd and was heavily spalted up the stem to ca. 8 metres. The tree was standing with very abbreviated foliage (the classic "broccoli top" look) and loads of deadwood. The crown was beginning to collapse when I politely asked the caretakers of the office I rent to drop it. Most of the crown except for the main stem shattered like porcelain when it hit the deck. The roots were pretty well hollowed out directly beneath the stem and there appeared to be movement on one side of the plate, which correlated to where the caretakers, in their wisdom had their bonfires. Two other sycamore adjacent to the scorced patch are showing the same symptoms.

From your pics it looks as if there are some very large stones under the rootplate. A contributor could be very shallow, rocky soil. That said, it managed to get to a pretty good size in spite of it.