daltontrees

If you can fit in the RPA between the road and the outside of the ditch by elongating the RPAs parallel to the road/ditch then I'd probably do that. Whether the roots (the important ones, remember the RPA is not the same as the rooting area) to under roads, under ditches and aunder ploughed fields depends on species, soil type and a load of other things.

Because it rarely ends well. One branch gets rubbed and weakened to the point of failure, and in the meantime (as Slater reasons) the fork below gets weaker and weaker with included bark and when the brace fails so does the fork. Plus I just like to see stuff radiating outwards from the centre. For highly visible trees that sort of aesthetic can be important.

Did you see the ICF has just added another module to the PME, called the professionalism e-module? Basically a test of knowledge of the code of prefessional conduct? More to worry about. The ICF is running a couple fo free 'Ask the Assessor' online 1 hour sessions next week, but I don't think you'd be allowed to ask questions about a specific CA.

You can't be sued for unbalancing a tree and potentially causing it to fall over. What would be wrong is unbalancing it without giving its owner fair warning that that might cause it to fall over. The tree is encroaching, it has not and never will have a right to be in your airspace and no notice of cutting back to the boundary need be given but as I say at common law a resultant failure and harm or damage could attract liability if the tree owner had no knowledge and oportunity to avoid the failure. There's one amendment to that. If someone cut a tree purely so that it would fall onto someone else's property, that would be malicious and I believe they could be sued. Personally I think they should. People deny access for work in these situations for a variety of reasons, it can be bloody-mindendess, it can be the hope that the extra costs and hassle of the work without access will put the neighbour off, it can even be the desire to put the neighbour to the maximum costs, but it's never genuine reasons. One -off trespass without damage is trivial in the eyes of the law, and if a stem were used briefly for a rope anchor to improve safety I think a court would chuck out a trespass suit. I'm glad no-one has rolled out the old 'criminal damage' myth on this one. At court, the law respects obvious rights and reasonable behaviour, and does not concern itself with trivialities.

I confess, I'm a natural brace remover unless the crossing is fused or unless the tree is in a risk-free environment. It rarely ends well otherwise.

Slater's prone to bold statements. Having been to one of his talks, I believe he's a bit of a dramatist. But I don't think he's saying that all compression forks are a result of natural bracing, he's saying all included bark is. I happen not to agree. Any situationthat results in a compression fork not flexing normally and thus allowing the bark cambium to generate bark within a compression over one or more years could create included bark. The deadwweight of overextended leaning substems can do this. I've even seen rocks jammed in forks by kids doing it. Articicial bracing could do it. And i think it may vary from speies to species, because the force exerted by the annual increment of woody tissue within a compression area may or may be not be great enough to crush the cambium and this may depend on porosity and other species-specific characteristics.

I am resubmitting mine this year, passed all the other bits last time but the CA was knocked back on pretty dubious grounds. Can swop notes with you but can't 'help'.

The British Standard for planning surveys says you have to tag the trees.

So after practicing in the mirror, the next day the young man gets up courage and during dinner he stands up, taps his tin mug to get everyone's attention and confidently says 'Twenty three'. To his amazement the place erupts in laughter. He asks the old lag what that was all about, who wipes a tears of laughter from his eyes and says 'We hadn't heard that one before".

R. ulmarius is not actively pathogenic and tends to colonise exposed heartwood in wounded mature or maturing trees, so the chances of it affecting a young replacement are as good as zero. Also I have never seen or heard of it on hornbeam or birch. I'd say crack on with a replacement, just don't use horse chestnut, elm, maple (inc sycamore) or poplar.

Ah but what I don't know about tertiary igneous petrology is not worth knowing. Then for the final I have the music of Boney M.😀

Ye shte person who advised you knows just enough to make it sound like he knows what he's talking about but not enough to actually know. It is now widely held, and for good reason, that staged reduction to avoid heave will not reduce the efffects of heave. If anything, doing it in one go and then immediately planting replacements (but in a more sustainable psition) will do more to reduce heave than a staged removal. And then there's the bloody obvious. Are you even in an area of shrinkable clay AND are your foundations designed or built to below the modern NHBC standard. Unless the answer to both of these is YES, then heave is not an issue.

Rack your brain no more. It is taxonomically impossible for a conifer to be an angiosperm and vice versa. Yew is not an angiosperm. The seed is naked (gymnosperm) but is surrounded on most sides by a fleshy aril which, like the fruit of angiospecms, has presumably ervolved to make it attractive to feeding animals that will help spread the seeds. but that's co-evolution, not taxonomic proximity.

Weep holes will still allow that water on the inside of the outer leaf to drain but also aid ventilation. Maybe it's just me, but htat's what I'll be doing for peace of mind. Also I leave out every third brick until the end to allow a regular clear-out. OTT I know, but... There are so many well thought-out products in the construction indistry that just don't work because of lazy or ignorant workies or corners being cut to save money.

I've only seen this in Scotland on Spruce so far. But once spotted it'sa hard not to see the next time. Wouldn't it have to be quite severe to girdle a tree? The ones I saw were from a new infection so I haven't seen the radial extent of tunneling under the bark. The exit holes are farily distinctive and the bleeding is a curious purple/lilac colour, almost invariably accompanied by resin runs.

Gimlet seems to ahve covered it pretty well. I utterly hate seeing no weep holes above catnic lintels. I'd bet that in an attempt to point their way out of trouble a previous owner has filled in the weep holes or perpends that were left there to let moisture running down the inside face of the outer leaf of brickwork (which is normal) dry out. I'd drill and rake them out because it bugs me that much. We had this issue in my first house when I was young, I remember water running down the inside of the dining room wall because some bawbag builder had forgotten to put weepholes in and cavity wall insulation had made it much much worse.

In Scotland that would be an actionable nuisance if it was done to spite a neighbour. No need to be vindictive about these things, or the law will no longer be on your side.

The legislation says a hedge is a barrier to light that comprises mainly evergreen trees and shrubs. So, it can include other things that are not trees or shrubs and if these are contributing to it being a barrier to light they could be removed. I would include ivy and bamboo amongst these. The extreme example you are putting forward of a line of bamboo does not fall within the legislation and therefore cannot be the subject of a high hedge notice.

No, it's a grass, not a tree or shrub. That said, a strict reading of the legislation suggests that a hedge mainly of evergreens could have bamboo within it and if the bamboo is contributing to it being a barrier to light then the reduction of the bamboo along with the rest of the hedge could arguably be part of a Notice.

A client's neighbour chopped his hedge when he was on holiday, and while there was a High Hedge application in to the Council. Got 150 hours community service and a criminal record, the sheriff said he was lucky not to be in jail. Criminal damages of about £5,600 paid.

The lowest that can be specified in a high hedge notice is 2 metres. The legislation is the Antisocial Behaviour Act. And yes this would eb criminal damage. The only worry would be that if the neighbour says he was going to cut the hedge and the owner has no record of saying that wasn't OK, hte neighbour could argue in court that he had agreement. So yes, get the disagreement on the record in writing and give somebody trustworthy and neutral a dated copy. Or send onesself a sealed tracked postage copy and don't open it when it arrives.

That's good to know, I have been feeling a bit guilty about using the occasional google aerial pic.

Form looks like Carpinus betulus 'Fastigiata' but the twigs and buds are too big, they look like Sorbus intermedia.

Here's the thing. Clay 'soils' are not the sort of dirt that plants are normally grown in. They are closer to rock substrate than the porous plant-friendly stuff that has 'field capacity' for seasonal water. Dry clay is pretty much waterproof unless subject to long slow soaks. The change in its volume that causes heave or subsidence takes a long time (months or years) and takes persistent soil moisture defecits or near-permanent soil misture increases (such as can happen when thirsty trees have been removed). Basically, it takes more than summer to winter weather changes to casue subsidence or heave.

I get where you are coming from, although I would be reluctant to create a new quantified system rather than applying ADB to existing risk assessment systems. What you are suggesting is interesting as it included elements of severity of harm/damage, likelihood of failure, target value and cost of risk reduction. As such, it touches on proportionality and prioritisation, which are not addressed properly by any current risk assessment system. Ideally a ADB risk response should tie in with legal duty of care. Using QTRA or TRAQ would be better I think than using a new ranking system that has no values relatable to duty of care, cost of intervention or return on risk redcution. Having had a go at this in theory and in practice, the answer I believe is not just in assessing the trees as they are but in forecasting rate of change and survivability. In other words, forget the current risk, what will the risk be in 6 months, or 1 year or 2 years? ADB changes probability of failure too quickly for the current probability to be the defining parameter