daltontrees

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.

I'm surprised you narrowed it down to just a few, you must have a bigger library than the Council.

It'd be a great contraceptive. 1. No social life therefore won't meet any women. 2. Even if you do you'll be a proper tree bore and she won't want to have babies. 3. You'll be too exhausted to do anything else in bed but sleep. 4. Youwon't want kids because they will become less interesting than trees. 5. After paying the course fees a family will become an economic impossibility.

Maybe next year, I'd like to see carving being done.

Myerscough says minimum 15 hours a week for 2 years. That's a lot if you are working and have family.

I think the best single book is Peter Thomas's Trees: Their Natural History. £8 on Amazon. A really good introduction but quite a lot of depth too.

The problem with top handled saws on the ground is that he HSE has a problem with it. They have prosecuted for this. It's like everything else in the business, everyone loves to rant about H&S madness but the rules are there for reasons even if you could go through a whole long life never getting kickback off a topper the HSE says if it can be used one-handed the temptation is there and people will and so there is an unacceptably high risk of someone getting hurt. People do it all the time, 200T running beside the chipper to be picked up to prune a stem that won't quite go in itself. Use a tophandled saw in an assessment, instrant fail, you won't even get to finish the assessment. Use one in a tree one-handed when you could have used two or got in a better work position and used two, instant fail. Use one on the ground ina construction site with a HSE bod there, red card , you're off site and losing money. Me, I stick to the rules not because I am scared to break them or don't know when it's safe to, I just prefer not to have to think about things like that day to day or have the apprentice think it's alright to break the rules then have to pick a 200T out of his forehead the next day. Plus (and this is a big one) I like to keep my tophandled saws clean and razor-sharp for up-tree work, and I rarely have to sharpen a chain, because there's no dirt up there to blunt the chain. Rules, as it is said, are for the guidance of the wise and the absolute adherence of fools, but I hope no-one lookingin on this thread thinks tha the industry endorses the habitual breaking of rules by anyone that thinks they know more about probability and human nature than HSE. Doesn't matter whose right.

Less aerodynamic, surely?

What game? The PTI set-up says "As a pre-requisite of attending the course it is fully expected that learners will have a detailed knowledge of tree biology, the tree as an undamaged self-optimised structure, biological and mechanical weaknesses, pathology, legislation, remedial options and their likely implications and the British Standard 3998 Recommendations for Treework." If you haven't got that, you will struggle, it's a 3 day intensive course and an assessment at the end where you have to produce a written report on a few random trees with no assistance from anyone in a tight timeslot. I'd add that if you haven't got that you shouldn't be doing tree inspections for money even if you do sneak through. When I did the PTI a few guys were trying to wing it on general contracting experience and they failed, one didn't even finish the course. And you probably won't get valid PI cover without this level of qualification. Surveyign without insurance would be nuts almost as nuts as anyone paying for a report that isn't backed by insurance. Surveying trees is easy. Assessing risk and making appropriate cost-effective recommendations that are relevant to the client's legal responsibilities and the physiological needs of the tree is a whole different ballgame. That's what quality is about. Do it right and it can be very rewarding, or I'd say don't do it at all.

[ame] [/ame] Placky bag 'durates' for 3 minutes. Drop an acorn out of an upper storey window, everyone from Gallileo onwards would guess it will accelerate (at about 10m/s/s) straight down, hindered only by air resistance. Velocity is speed plus direction so the concept of fall velocity is currently not really making sense to my slightly tired brain. Maybe I should read the article, but not tonight.

Keep us posted, will you? I've only seen P.l. suspects from a couple of metres away, not able to trespass to confirm my suspicions. I am pretty sure I saw one in Oxford last summer, the dieback had been so rapid that it was hard to comprehend how anything could take a tree from full vigour to fox-brown and completely dead so very quickly. There were such jitters about this disease a few years ago then it all went quiet. When you think how many Lawsons there are in gardens, it would eb quite devastating if it swept through the country. But it's one of those Oomycota I think, and maybe doesn't spread by aerial spores so much as by ground water, so maybe can be contained.