daltontrees

The americans are almost certainly using iTree, with as Sloth has suggested the 'eco' module. Whilst it is quite sophisticated, the values are ultimately arbitrary. There is a fundamental difficulty in equating monetary value with ecological or amenity value, and an even bigger difficulty in setting public funding policy for tree management against asset values. Send me a private message if you want to know ore about my recent expriences on doing the iTree eco survey for Glasgow. Also have a look at the valuation thread in Arbtalk which I started maybe 6 months ago and which gives you a flavour of some of the complexities and also a hint at the lack of interest in getting tree valuation onto a meaningful credible footing. I plan to revisit the thread sometime soon but I am fairly sure there is no real appetite ofr the subject her on Arbtalk, if anywhere... That's niot to say you shouldn't give it a go. You will have a long and challenging amd perhaps fulfilling journey ahead of you, and one that would eb very fruitful as part of formal arboriculture study as it touches on many areas and bumps you up against public policy. With your forehead mostly.

Iteresting... the forewood forum 2 days ago concluded it was Alder. Personally I suspect it's Populus tremula.

I see whaty you are getting at but the tests to be applied to such situations are so clearly set out in legislation that it would be very very hard to build a case solely around reliance on the TO's advice. And the TO is there not to advise on what the owner should do but what he believes the Council's position would be in the event of a 5 day notice or an application. That might sound like advice but it's what the TO would advise the Council to do not what the owner shoudl do to discharge the duty of care within the satutory rules.

That can't be the case, surely? That would put LAs in an almost impossible position. I'll hava alook at the new Regulations.

I must ask first whether you are professionally qualified and whether your client would expect you, through your behaviour, advertising, correspondence, discussions etc. to be in a position to advise him about the tree? I mean whether paid or not? Were you there just to price the work? If not, you may have some residual liability thaat you ought to tidy up ASAP.

Modify this http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CEAQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lcv.org.uk%2Fshared%2Ffiles%2Frisk_assessments%2FWinching.pdf&ei=jWg1U6-qMcGm0QXwmIHADQ&usg=AFQjCNEP3eJdD8vwhzTon-DwaODsXLyAVg

I neither agreeing nor diagreeing with you, I am just curious about something. If you took off enough weight to make a significant difference to the splitting force of teh dead load on the basal compression fork, wouldn't that cause the stem to straighten up, transferring compression into the fork and putting unaccustomed loads onto the narrow zone of adaptive growth at the poinbt of included bark? Wouldn't cambium at the margin be crushed? Or do you mean that removing weight would be done to remove wind forces? Or both? I see the base of treesrus's failed tree is fluted and has perhaps pockets of decay or dead bark that might have contributed to failure through dessication or decay. The OP's butt ('scuse the expression) looks mint by comparison.

Ach, no need to brace, that washing line will probably stop the left stem failing.

The roof witht eh solar panels is facing a little south of east. I would have said tha tthe low branches on the southeast side of the canopy were maybe blocking direct sun tot eh solar panels for about 3 or 4 weeks a year between 4am and 5.30am. If so, the increased daylight to the panels achieved by the pruning could probably have been achieved by situating the panels further south on the roof. Anyway, it doesn't explain the huge reduction in the northwest sector of the canopy.

Delete the thread before you get a call from the Cooncil!

I would suggest that the answer to your questions are (i) nothing, and (ii) nothing. Beech is immensely strong and readier than most to fuse as this union seems to be doing. The stems look almost perfectly codominant and healthy and not overextended. A review after 5 years might suffice to check that adaptive growth around the compression zone is keeping up with any weakness arising from included bark and any issues arising form compression.

Any idea why the guidance has been issued now 9 years after the Regulations came into force?

Very nicely done!

Generally yes but not absolutely. Just like supermarkets selling meat byt eh kilo and filing it with water to get the weight up, logs are less and less vaulable as their water content increases. Encouraging logs to be priced pourely by weight encourages the selling of wet or partly seasoned logs. Every bit of excess water requires some of the log's calorific energy to be used up in heating then vapourising the water into steam. The logs will still burn but won't give out teh same heat because a large part is going up the chimney as steam. Where no doubt it condenses on cooler parts of the building and creates a problem.

And it mught be wrh bearing in mind that if this 'nerd' is left to research it himself, a Google search for 'calorific value' of wood will turn up this thread. How's the customer going to feel then? I have to say that I find it disappointing that quite a few people in the industry aren't able to quote or even approximate for their customers something as basic as how much heat a fuel gives out. As has been said, if BG tried being vague, this Ofgas would shut them down. So come on, it's not hard.

Eh? The link takes me to a web page that shows that wood is CHEAPER than everything else...

Equivalent calorific value in GigaJoules is 4.6 per cube then. It's interesting to think of logs in kWh though. I have a 7kW stove, which is quite terrifying when it is going full blast. A cube of ash is going to give me 1280/7 = 183 burning hours. Which is a month at 6 hours a day. That about fits in with what I have been getting through recently, although I haven't quite been using a cube a month because a rarely have the stove on full tilt.

OK, no-one's suggesting a rate. I have checked the arithmetic for logs at £250/T three times and the rate of c.£14/GJ is right. But I had made a mistake in the gas comparison. Here is the corect figure at current supplier prices of c.£0.05/kWh Gas comparison £0.05/3.6MJ = £0.05/0.0036GJ = £13.88/GJ (weird and coincidentally same as wood price). Sorry for any confusion.

I'll have a look just now... Meantime does anyone want to suggest what a going rate for a tonne of 20% moisture would be, split and delivered?

Have I said something to offend? Not only have I answered your question and told you how I have answered it and given you the facility to tweak the answer for any situation, but I have tried to explain why a customer might genuinely want to know what the calorific value is. And I have compared it with the calorific value of gas and electricity and given you a way of showing customers how cost-effective logs are. Your instinct to try and answer your awkward customer question is sound. If I had the option to shop in two places and one of the suppliers couldn't answer my sensible questions, I would go with the other guy. Honestly, it's not hard to prove the case for logs. He's not an awkward customer, he's a customer, and the customer is always right even when he is wrong. And sometimes an awkward customer is trying you out for bigger things. Or can bad-mouth you rightly or wrongly to other potential customers. It pays to persevere. Ignore the opportunity if you like, it's your business. Challenge my figures or calculations or reasoning by all means if you want, debate is healthy and I'm not always right. Ignore me too if you want. I shan't try to help again.

I think it's reasonable to want to know. Calorific value can be expessed in kWh or in Joules. As the FC documents linked by someone earlier show, a typical oven dried wood will have a total energy of about 5MWh per oven dry tonne. That's equivalent to 5,000,000J x 60 seconds x 60 minutes = 18GJ (GigaJoules). If a tonne of oven dried (or very dry anyway) logs will cost £250, then the cost of wood energy is £250/18GJ = £13.88 per GigaJoule. Gas is about £0.05 per kWh which is £0.05 per 3.6MJ which is equal to £72 per GigaJoule. Electricity is about £180 per GigaJoule. If you're selling logs that are less than dry, the FC leaflet gives a rough way of adjusting the calorific value. Bottom line is that you can point out to customer that logs are a substantially cheaper way of heating space than gas or electricity. Remember though that stoves are only about 70% efficient. So it costs more like £20/GJ. This approach only applies to price poer weight. Densitied of dried woods vary considerably and the equivalent calculation for £ per cube is difficult. But since only comparison of £ per calorific values allows a customer to see the sense of buying logs, £ per cube is meaningless.

Excellent! Cheered me up on a rainy morning this did.

Erm... a chog is a lump of wood. Chogging is cutting wood into lumps. Done on th ground we might call it crosscutting. Gravity being what it is, it's pretty hard to chog in a tree without it going down. But if you had a crane you could in theory chog up. Snatching, now that makes no sense. And what on earth is negative rigging if it's not positively rigged?

I'm on a roll now! Pet hate for me is 'pollarding'. Originally meant coppicing above ground level to keep grazing animals away from the regrowth. The right word for reducing tree in height was 'polling'. Now pollarding is just a fancy and meaningless word for topping.

Plus cannae stand advantageous buds and auxiliary buds. The words are adventitous and axillary, but rather oddly the misused words seem appropriate for the situations.