daltontrees

I have seen this many times and it is not associated with decay or dysfunction. I have decided that it is therefore nothing to worry about, but if I had to guess I'd say it was dead lichen. The resupinate ones are really quite tough, and if they died and contracted a bit I expect they would look like this. Probably signalling an increase in atmospheric pollution. But I'm just speculating.

s.154 Cutting or felling etc. trees etc. that overhang or are a danger to roads or footpaths. (1) Where a hedge, tree or shrub overhangs a highway or any other road or footpath to which the public has access so as to endanger or obstruct the passage of vehicles or pedestrians, or obstructs or interferes with the view of drivers of vehicles or the light from a public lamp, or overhangs a highway so as to endanger or obstruct the passage of horse-riders, a competent authority may, by notice either to the owner of the hedge, tree or shrub or to the occupier of the land on which it is growing, require him within 14 days from the date of service of the notice so to lop or cut it as to remove the cause of the danger, obstruction or interference.

This thread is surely the saddest low-point of Arbtalk of the year, and it's still january. Now I'm a purist and although I'm not a tree-hugger I would personally shoot anyone spiking a Birch in January, it will bleed and bleed until April, then suffer for another couple of years. Anyone with two brain cells to rub together knows this, and no-one who gives the slightest damn about trees or their personal professional reputation or about getting prosecuted would do it. We need trees, we don't need cowboys, an important difference. It's only a tree but we're only all in this world together and we all know that we can't trust politicians to care about anything but their own personal short-term prestige. How could Councils possibly police conservation areas, when resources are determined not by what needs to be done but by what is made available by politicians competing for popularity that is largely judged by how cheaply they can run the country? Whether you should grass someone else up for doing it is maybe a sightly different matter. I'd say it's up to the conscience of the OP. If he listens to opinions of people on Arbtalk he is likely to wonder whether anyone in modern society cares about anything or anyone but themselves, and will probably drift towards that selfish indifferent attitude himself, as society is collectively doing. OK Steve Bulman it's your website and just because you got an award for outstanding contribution to arboriculture doesn't mean you're not allowed to state a personal opinion here on Arbtalk. But there was something about your initial indifference, and how it spurred on the dont-give-a-fig brigade who personify the way that our industry again and again cons society and is almost inseperable from the cowboys that it sometimes berates and sometimes praises, that really gets me down this evening. But in the morning I'll just get on with doing things properly for people who either care or trust me to care. It'll all make for a tiresome endless discussion in the treeless hell that we're all going to end up in together anyway. Meantime I say grass the tossers up, make a diference, give a damn about someone other than yourself. That's my opinion and I'll take it to hell and back.

Looks like a good starting point. The bigger examples are coming in at well over £1700/m2 for turnkey. There could be an element of quantum saving for a larger building than the examples, and one of the spaces is a garage with little internal finishes so it would be at a lower rate. And you have to take maybe 15% off the rate for founds and services. I still think you're at around £1,500/m2 net of fees, founds, services, land purchase, fees and VAT (for newbuilds the VAT rate should be 0).

In short, the answer to your last question is undoubtedly yes.

I think that you will find that the Highways Act doesn't concern itself with common law distinctions of trespass or encroachment, vegetation either is or isn't creating an unacceptable risk to users (pedestrians or vehicles). The situation is further complicated by concepts of vesting of land by highways authorities, comprising just the road surface and base and verges but not the air space above them or the ground below. I don't think Mynors covers this in a cogent way.

Building rates are usually given as £/m2 gross internal area. Nothing to do with the area of walls and impossible to convert to linear metre rates.

Anybody got a 110 yard long Kirby Grip they're not needing?

I'd say £1k/m2 is way low for a one-off. One of the reasons timber framed houses are popular, apart from better thermal performance than masonry, is that the framwes can be mass-produced offsite where there's dray factory floors to work on, Tye're then brought in and put up in no time, saving on development funding time. I'd say a one-off would hardly be worth producing in a factory and would just take a long time to put up, it might be better building it piece by piece instead of pre-fabbing big sections. In this country I don't think there's any slack cut on U values and fire protection for 'log-style' houses, and so it's not like a cheap single skinned log cabin with relaxations for only occasional occupation, so the log would be a cladding or an external leaf and you're still going to have a lot of structure in the inner leaf and finishes that are non-standard. Some savings to be made by ensuring openings take standard size doorsets and windows. A lot is going to depend on whether anyone in the UK produces modular materials for log cabins. I can't think how much you would save on standard build costs for foundations and services, I'd think they are pretty much the same rate for any kind of construction. I'd guess you're up at £1500/m2 for a fully compliant dwelling, but could be much less if it can be treated as a short-stay summer-only chalet or some other class of building. IU don't eve see it lending itself to a rate/m2 pricing, you'd probably need to fully spec it with nominated suppliers before anyone would cost it for you in the real world without thinking of a (big) number and doubling it.

I checked with Historic Scotland last week for a hedge and they said trees and hedges can't form part of a listing. And as someone piinted out if it was TPO'd it might not help. He could refuse to cut it to abate the nuisance and then the Council would have to come along and cut it in default and they coud calim TPO immunity becasue abating a nuisance. If they let the guy cut it back over a couple of years, I bet it could be made to regenerate. But it'd all be hand-cutting and that would blow the guy's footwear budget. He'd never save enough to get that other shoe.

Nope!

I plug them, in my mind that's good practice, but maybe no-one else is doimg it. And the trick is using the right thing to plug them with. Gotta be cautious with what the Shwartzengelsbrelloermattheck squad recommend, they' might have vested interests in decay detection proprietorial tools. I have the article you refer to, no need to post but thanks anyway.

Well advised. And specifically s206(4) "In relation to any tree planted pursuant to this section, the relevant tree preservation order shall apply as it applied to the original tree." And the remedies open to a LPA are easier to pursue for contravention of the duty unde s.203 than for failure to meet a TPO approval condition, although pretty weak. Aforegoing does not apply to Scotland.

Is it a TPO or CA situation? You need to pin it down to a particular fungal species. Best candidates are H.annosum, P. schewinitzii and A. ostoyae. Unless it's the first one I wouldn't be bothered. Pictures look like H.a as I've seen it. And P.s. So if you can be sure it's H.a. there's a few ways to look at it. Firstly it could be too late to try and contain it. Secondly, removal of other trees will probably speed up its spread. Thirdly there would have to be spruce-to-spruce root contact, H.a won't travel through soil to find other hosts. Also worth considering whther the tree was wounded already or stressed by other factors. What you advise also depends on TPO/CA status and your expertise and qualifications. Saying someone on the internet said fell the lot won't do. I'd be thinking about selective increment boring of adjacent stems, but only for conifers and even then only the ones tat will fall outwards and can't be diagnosed by non-invasive visual means. And I'd be cleaning the borer religiously between bores and plugging the boreholes.

AS others have said, torque is rotational force of some sort of mechanical arm. So here's a way of thinking of it in human terms. If your forearm is 1/3 of a metre, then 75nm is the equivalent of rotating a weight of 22.5kg (just less than the weight of a bag of sand) on an arm of 1/3m. So imagine standing alongside a table, put your elbow on it and have a bag of sand on the floor witha rope around it and you have the rope in your hand. Sort of like horizontal arm wrestling. 75nm would be the equivalent of being able to pull your forearm and the bag of sand from the horizontal to the vertical in about a tenth of a second. If you managed it, the bag of sand would fly over your head and hit the celiling. Quite a significant force. Tractors use a short arm and all the engine's power to shift huge weights slowly and steadily. Sports cars use a longer lever arm and all the engine's power to get a relatively light vehicle up to high speeds very quicky.

I'm borderline clueless about how it all works, but I think that fundamentally the plan HAS to be geo-referenced.

I don't know if the Ben's 1 or 2 Munros. It might be the biggest but if done by the tourist route it's one of the dullest. Still impressive effort for a 6 year old. I cant get my 6 year old to go up the stairs of an evening.

I've done the Buachaille about 20 times, it never gets boring. Last time I did it up a rock route (Raven's Edge) my pal was leading, pulled off a TV sized rock at the crux whch came straight towards me, I was of course belaying and couldn't move, it landed directly on the rope as it lay slightly slack on a small slab in front of me and cut the rope core leaving only the outer sheath intact. Said boulder then bounced sideways past me, only announcing its arrival with a clatter at the bottom of the crag about 5 seconds later. If I hadn't been wearing tight leg loops I think my boots would have filled up. Now that's the perfect moment to know an Alpine Butterfly. And the Hail Mary.

Fab picture, says it all.

Is that on the Ben? cracking day out. If you go up the Ben by the tourist route you don't get to see the vast corrie of near-vertical rock, but from the arte you can see it all day. And you can bale out at the 'abseil posts' or carry on up to the summit, see the hordes of flip-flop wearing chinese tourists in nthe early stages of hypothermia and wish you hadn't bothered.

I got as far as multicolinearity and gave up! If I manage to magic up time from somewhere I may refer to thi article again in the Tree valuation thread.

I'm relieved to hear it, Arbtalk won't be there on Crib Goch if the weather turns nasty just after the point of no return, and no bandana's going to ward off frostbite. It's a serious route and if you come off you won't stop for 1000 feet. Try it in summer before trying it in winter.

I use my winter climbing boots because I like the shank in them when on spikes, could stand on spikes all day because of the rigidity in the sole. Not a full shank though. A 3/4 is about right. But be careful, what you're giving up is chainsaw and toe protection. Unless you take them off and put on chainsaw boots when you get back on the ground you're at risk and will be failing the PPE Regs, so invalidatng your EL or personal injury insurance. Steelys have saved my toes more than once, including a bizarre accident when I managed to hit the toecap with a running MS200T. I just saw these Arbortec Scafell Lite Chainsaw Boots - Black they tick every box and are at the same price level as some of the mountaineering boots recommended by others here with none of the drawbacks. Plus they are I think VAT-free because they are safety kit. My current boots are getting pretty worn, so I think I'll treat myself at the end of the tax year. Anyone tried them?

I'd say are you not just asking how much people charge per hour? Also why are you asking in the firewood forum?

OP might not need to b uy a book if 'Chris' (didn't know he had a real name) keeps up the fact of the day thread.