daltontrees

One of the Poplars?

In my fee proposals to clients I specify that it is conditional on being provided with a topo survey and right to use for the project. If I adapt or adopt drawings I say that on the plan or in the report. Seems to cover all eventualities.

Just to be clear, to write your own specs you need PTM Pro and you get a free copy of Survey Writer but to put it on a hand-held you need Pocket GIS.

I came across these pictures, taken at the Museum of Rural Life at East Kilbride. Probably spruce.

This is more or less my view, except I am using a Trimble Geo. Having a few problems with PT Mapper just now with georeferencing, but once it's working it's simple. A little too simple for out-of-the ordinary situations, but not bad. The secret here is to use the free Survey Writer programme that comes with PTM Pro and add a section that allows you to record on-site measurements from any tree to any obstacle that you think will be creating a linear barrier to rooting. Initially Councils seem to be happy with circular plots even wherre rooting clearly won't be circular, but if not you at least have the info to be able to crop the RPA without resurveying. PTM Pro allows you to do this. It is also useful when the trees are plotted wrongly due to the inherent imprecision of GPS signals.

Yes but as Gary says and as we all know, some Councils let through all sorts of rubbish and in the longer term this colletively sends out the message that precision doesn't matter.

I reckon it would have just about been OK if the spar that broke had not been in poor condition. As you look down you can see it was rotten on the side that had to take tension, and when its butt hits the ground the butt end shatters. You were requiring it to act alomost purely in tensional sideways pull with a long lever arm. On the other hand the other spar that you cut was acting almost like a strut, mostly taking just compression down its length. The breakage of the failed spar would have absorbed a bit of energy. When the 'goofd' top hit teh ground head first, it was stopped form carrying on by teh failed spar acting as a counterweight. At this point the remaining good spar was taking the weight of both and absorbing the kinetic energy of both. It might have taken the whole top without the second pulley attachment. The only good the failed spar did was the amoutn of energy its breakage would have absorbed. You were right not to climb. A bigger lift would have been the answer, but that's in a perfect world. Lucky in the end, but I suspect subconsciously you had taken precautions by being on the right side. If that flying spar had taken out the lift with you in it, you would have had a short journey to your funeral.

I'm surprised that it hasn't been customised in a vulgar way.

I recall some related debate recently on UKTC. Whilst it wasn't conclusive (nothing ever is there), one issue was that Council's cannot specify that work is done by a contractor, as that is beyond the remit of conditions. The owner has the right to do the work himself. And then we are in the territory of Councils only being willing to agree to works being done if they are done properly. That in itself seems reasonable in some cases. I recall, though that Guidance that might(!) still be in effect suggests specifying stuff in accordance with BS3998. And there appears to be a difference between what a Council can specify in aTPO approval and what it can specify in planning approvals affecting trees (whether TPO'd or not). Re: RE: RE: Competence -special case and thereabouts in the archive. What I advocate is using specific passages from BS3998. Last week I had to do this, a TPO'd tree that the Council is really precious about, and the Council requested a lot of detal about how the work would be done. I have a text-only version of the Standard, so I pasted in the relevant paragraphs and then stripped out all the bits that weren't relevant. The text was then changed in narrative style to be a Method Statement. In ways this is bettter than specifying compliance with BS3998, because it is much more focused, doesn't require a scouring of the whole Standard by every potential contractor to find out which bits are relevant, and doesn't even require contractors or tree owners to have a copy of the Standard. But it took half an hour. It had to be done to get consent and to have enough precision to allow the Council to check the work afterwards.

The full Forsestry Commission definition is "The definition of woodland in United Kingdom forestry statistics is land under stands of trees with a canopy cover of at least 20% (or having the potential to achieve this), including integral open space, and including felled areas that are awaiting restocking. A tree is defined by its species; a list of tree species in British woodland is given in Chapter 4. There is no minimum height for trees to form a woodland at maturity, so the definition includes woodland scrub but not areas of gorse, Rhododendron, etc., outside woodland. This is a different definition from that used internationally which is based on 10% canopy cover and a minimum height at maturity of 5m, but the two definitions are estimated to give similar areas of woodland in the UK. "There is no minimum size for a woodland. In this report, 'woodland' (defined in the glossary) refers to woods and forests of all sizes. The 1995-99 National Inventory of Woodland and Trees mapped all areas down to 2.0 ha, but sample-based information was also collected for smaller woods, small groups of trees and individual trees. The area statistics in Chapter 1 show totals for woods over 0.1 hectares. "Woodland includes native and non-native trees; semi-natural and plantation areas. Woodland habitat types are not currently differentiated in these statistics." However, this is a statistics collection definition, and therefore has its limitations. It could be useful as a starting point, depending on the purpose of trying to define an area as a woodland (or otherwise). It seems to me that anything smaller than 0.1Ha it would be stretching a point to call it a woodland. 0.1ha would measure (if it was square) 30 metres by 30 metres. Or a circle of diameter 35 metres.

Get it copyrighted.

Is that an official term?

https://www.planningportal.co.uk/info/200126/applications/60/consent_types/4

See the attached. May be a bit out of date, but not substantially. In Scotland this is known as "Planning Permission in Principle", which I think is a much more meaningful term.

Removal of several Hakia trees, a wattle, survey on a couple of declining english oaks and formative pruning of about 1,000 olive trees and 6 water oaks and spec for management pruning of a pin oak. Distant family connection. Nice work if you can get it. On a 500 hectare vineyard, all the Shiraz and biltong you could fit in, free. By the pool. In mid January, their high summer.

Cape Town, South Africa. And I did the job! I only charged for flights and 2 weeks' accommodation for me and my family.

I have just been appointed on a case this morning where this very thing is happening. Worse, it is a detailed consent with all or any tree work being a reserved matter. It's in a Conservation Area. Effectively the trumping of CA by consent has been undone by conditions. Dammit!

Nothing wrong with pedantry when the quasi-judicial purpose of wording demands an absence of ambiguity. Could have been plainer if the wording had said "The removal of both branches would result in large wounds that would have unacceptably high potential to cause decay and loss of the amenity that the tree provides" Leavign the question hanging, wold removal of just one branch be OK?

I wonder if the application would have been treated differently if it was for phased removal of the limbs. The potential for decay could have been reduced to an acceptable level by requiring a satisfactory medhod statement that controlled when the work was done, by whom and how. And I would be asking Sloth's question - what is the reason for the works? If this is an important tree for amenity and the owner's reason for wanting crown lifting were not compelling, the Council could be right in refusing it, although it could certainly have worded it more elegantly.

Assuming you are in England or Wales. No. Maybe I am missing something here, but it seems your LPA wants to ensure that works are only carried out to the tree if consent for development is granted. That may be on principle and/or to allow control of how the work is done and a fuller assessment of just how much work is required. Sorry to disagree with the other contributors and yourself, but it seems that not only can the LPA do it this way but this is the best way it should do it, pending a full detailed application. At that stage the LPA may be satisfied that the tree works are adequately detailed in the application such that the tree works are proportionate and necessary, will only be carried out if development commences and that the works can be controlled by planning conditions. It is not uncommon for indicative schemes to go in with outline applications. This can be useful for the LPA to envisage the likely next stage (i.e. a detailed application), but if outline consent is then granted the indicative layout has no status whatsoever. Likewise any supporting information such as TPP/AIA that did the same job of reassuring the LPA that development is in principle feasible. Put it this way, without that sort of information the LPA migh have been able to decide that access was not possible without unacceptable damage to or loss of trees and that in the right circumstances could competently result in refusal of outline consent. I say this having been involved in cases where outline consent was refused solely on the basis that satisfactory access was not possible in any shape or form.

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I know, I live there.

Might be considered what?

Just a general observation here, and be warned I am a bit of a pedant so I am focusing on what was probably an idle choice of preposition by you, viz "at [the bottom]". Fungi that are literally ON the bottom of a tree agre generally bad, they may be either killing and feeding or feeding on dead material (or shades in between), and are cause for closer inspection and fungal ID to arrive at a prognosis for the tree. Fungi AROUND the base of a tree can be good or bad. If they are in reality growing from roots close to the surface, the previous generality applies. But they might just as well be growing in soil close to the tree in a very beneficial symbiotic way, sharing duties with the tree (e.g. they fix nitrogen and in return the trees give them sugars). Identification is of course useful to decide where they lie on the bad/bad sign/neutral/good sign spectrum. For fungi AT the base of a tree, the first thing to do (if the species isn't apparent) is to see if they are growing on the tree or around the tree; this is crucial for a prognosis.

That's got to be useful to the mycoboffins on Arbtalk. Personally they are so much better than me that I ususally sre requetsfor fungal ID, work out what I think it is, write it down on a post-it and wait for the right answer to come in. If I was on Pop Master, I'd have a 'One Year Out' t-shirt by now.