Squaredy

I have just been totally fooled into thinking I was watching a Marsh Harrier, but it turns out it is a very realistic kite. Do Network Rail employ such measures around overhead wires? It is right next to the newly electrified South Wales main line in the Gwent Levels. Would birds pose a hazard to a train? I am no birdie but I get excited about wildlife, and then my wife spots the string! She can’t stop laughing.

Photos would be a real help. I also suffered subsidence recently but luckily due it being my own tree, the 'solution' was easy - it was removed by the insurance company. But to be fair although my tree was the obvious cause there was another much more serious cause. My house is built on shrinkable clay with foundations around 400mm deep. New builds in my street have 1000mm foundations specified by building control now. So the real fault lies with the prevalent building regulations 90 years ago. My house is always going to be at risk.

What you are describing Saul is if I understand you correctly a small version of a pump storage power station. There are a number of them in Scotland and at least one in Wales. I think they should build more. For that matter I think there could be much better use of hilly areas with hydro power. There is a fairly small (42 acres) reservoir near me which has been empty for years as maintenance is carried out by Welsh Water. They should so use the opportunity to install hydro power whilst they are at it. Even if they only get a small amount of electricity - it all helps.

You make a very very good point, I also dislike the plastic based insulation materials, they are themselves unsustainable. But I think you also underestimate the cost of electrical heating. Currently electricity is around three times the price of natural gas. So without insulation an average house with a current heating bill of say £1000 per year (natural gas) will cost £3000 per year with electricity. Unless of course renewably generated electricity eventually becomes much much cheaper. And of course you are ignoring the extra comfort in a home which does not get too hot in the summer or freezing cold in the summer, Maybe the solution is vastly improved insulation with natural materials. For example wool, straw etc. I am aware this may give rise to problems with mice and other critters, but I assume there are ways around this? My own house I am toying with the idea of adding 50mm western red cedar external cladding (which I will mill and dry of course). If I ever manage this I would expect a much drier house and a reasonable increase in insulation.

I don't know enough about new builds to really comment, but I agree old houses need drastic improvement. Insulation is possible, but to do it properly is very very difficult and expensive. My brother lives in a 1920's end of terrace in Bristol, brick built with no cavity. He has recently had 100mm external insulation added, partly funded by the local authority. It has been done well, but there are still problems, as windows, doors, downpipes etc were all designed without this extra 4 inches of wall thickness. On the plus side, the house is now much more pleasant inside in all weather and heating costs have decreased a lot. It would look a lot better if all houses in the street had been done, but only about half were. I would love to insulate the outside of my house too but I am not yet sure what if any approach will work. My lounge has two external walls and a very nice but very cold large bay window and if the rad gets hot enough we recon we have done well if it reaches 20 degrees C on a cold evening. In the morning it will be down to about 13 degrees after a really cold night. It is brick built with a cavity, and some damp but a lot less damp than it used to as we have had the cavity wall insulation removed. As John Seymour said in one of his books, insulating old houses to a high standard needs to become a huge industry in the UK.

And put aside a lot of time to keep maintaining it.

If you have an Axminster store in your area you can go there and have a demo of Tormek and other systems. Their staff are only too willing to show this sort of thing in my experience.

Why do people think farming is subsidised? Because it is. 3 billion per year roughly in the UK. Is cheap food really a benefit? Maybe food waste and obesity might be reduced if people valued food more?

I am no expert I will admit, but farming in the UK makes more money from subsidies than selling their products. And to be specific, don't small farms receive something called the Single Farm Payment? A relative of mine who is a cow farmer certainly does and it is very important to him. So as I said livestock farming is heavily subsidised. Who do so many farmers neglect their woodlands and work their fields hard? Because the agriculture is so much more heavily encouraged financially than the forestry. Wales alone has around 150,000 acres of unmanaged hardwood woodland. When did you last see a field that has not been touched for 70 years?

I have been reading this thread with interest. Fair play Jonathon you are good at starting interesting threads. I think anyone who doesn't see the down side of the high property prices in the UK is being a little naive. A lot of people have benefited from the high price of property and land....mainly land owners and anyone who owns more than one house especially. And of course anyone who inherits a house or a share of. The majority of people in the UK have done very nicely out of this bubble. I may do one day when my parents/in-laws pop their clogs. But you have to feel for anyone trying to get their foot on the property ladder. That is really what Big J is talking about. OK he is wanting to do it slightly differently from most, but before the last 20 years of crazy property value increases it would have been probably quite feasible for him to do exactly what he is suggesting. For an average decent family home in Devon to be worth maybe £350,000 when Devon is full of people in the tourist industry earning maybe £17,000 per year is a huge problem. The system is broken. Same problem in London and most of South East England. Many people can only ever rent (at a rate that means they will never be able to save up a deposit) or hope they will one day inherit. It is a very sad situation, not for the majority who are doing very nicely thank you, but for the millions who may never be able to get on the property ladder, and are stuck in a cycle of ever-increasing rent. I for one think that if Brexit means the property market crashes, or at least drops 20% or so this could be very welcome relief for a lot of people. I also want to just say that it is so ironic that as this thread highlights, the only type of activity that is fully supported and for which an AOC is likely to be granted is exactly the sort of activity that is contributing vastly to global warming and food insecurity. Sustainable profitable forestry is not allowed, yet unsustainable animal agriculture is encouraged and heavily subsidised. And when I say unsustainable animal agriculture, I am not suggesting all animal husbandry is unsustainable, but if you take a look at the bigger picture such farming is most certainly unsustainable.

So it is not going on the road at speed? In which case balancing no problem. Go for it but watch some YouTube vids for instruction. Most difficult part is breaking the bead.

Yes have done it several times. Not too easy and will take much longer than you imagine. And it will not be balanced. Two questions really: is it worth it; and what type of vehicle is it?

Yeah maybe that is all they want. OP didn’t say and I assumed product liability. Theft and accidental damage cover should be cheap enough. Proving the value could be tricky if it was pinched.

I could carry out a risk assessment for you for a modest fee....

What is the piece? I am just wondering how risky it is but without knowing if it is a 20m totem pole or a turned life size cherry we are a bit in the dark. I sort of hope it is a life size cherry...

I have just been contacted by a man who is purchasing a property in Kent (ME13) and wants to find a contractor who can clear a ten acre cherry orchard. The area is to be re-planted as a vineyard. It is 400 or more trees around 18 inches diameter so will be a fair chunk of work for a small scale forester. If you are interested please PM me and I will share the owner's contact details. I do not have a lot of information about the job, and I cannot vouch for what is involved but the customer seemed to know what he is up to. Hopefully when the trees are down I might be able to purchase a lorry load for milling - it would be a shame if it all went for biomass. It is a bit far from me, but I have heard that lots of lorries from this area head to Kent with logs for the biomass plant, so maybe one can make a detour and come back with a load!

Yeah Richie Benauld was awesome. And in his day one of the best Aussie players ever.

Indeed, and don’t forget the butterfly with a limp!

I always follow the cricket, but as a sawmiller not an arborist I cannot afford Sky so out comes my long wave radio. Aggers and the others are great anyway, but I do miss Blowers.

As a general rule you may be better off buying from forestry contractors. That way you can get a whole timber lorry load delivered for around £70 per cubic metre or maybe a bit more for Oak. I do buy from tree surgeons but usually only if they deliver to me and then I pay around £70 per cubic metre. And make sure you know how to calculate volume otherwise you will get into endless arguments about how many tons you are being sold. I would suggest always paying per by volume not weight.

Yes agreed, that is the easiest way. The surface can still dry but not the inside. And keep them somewhere cool but with air gaps between them so they don’t start going mouldy. Softwoods usually best as they won’t fall apart.

No indeed does not sound nice. However I still think most people would be horrified if they knew how often we in the UK allow raw sewage to flow directly into our rivers and coasts. And I know this is not a unique UK problem of course.

Well I for one would happily pay more for such a basic human necessity as drinking water and waste water treatment. If my bill increased by 35% it would cost an extra 80 pence a day, but across all customers would give Welsh Water many million extra to reduce rainwater getting into sewers. Have you ever walked on a beach covered in sanitary towels????!!!! I have.

Yes, but what is shocking is that this happens surprisingly often. For example Pendine sands (one of the UK's biggest beaches and a major tourist spot) had raw sewage discharged 317 days out of 365 in 2017. Now I know Wales has a reputation for plenty of rain, but even Snowdonia does not have this much! Link here Sewage empties into waterways 30k times WWW.BBC.CO.UK Campaigner wants more to be done to stop storm overflows getting into Welsh rivers and seas. Much of the problem is that so many rainwater gutters and I would imagine street drains discharge into sewers instead of storm drains and soakaways. My house is a good example. It was built in 1925 and like every other house in the street the downpipes from the front of the house go to the strom drain which empties into the local drainage ditch; but the downpipes from the rear of the house goes into the sewer. In this example it is fixable - not cheap - but then neither are the fines which we will end up paying if the Environment Agency ever get round to enforcing the law.

Thanks for that, I am looking into them. Ideally I would rather avoid cotton altogether, but at least it is organic, and they are reasonably priced and plain so ideal for embroidered workwear.