openspaceman

Yes as the little lady said Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien The whole thing was a cock up from the start and I expected an impact on our financial sector but abstained as I am not young enough to suffer the consequences and didn't anticipate it getting this bad but a lot of that is to do with covid and the government trying to spend our way out of it, and failing. I consider the management of our larger companies, hijacked by their global shareholders' demands rather than sustainability, to be the major reason our industries have failed. Of course my trade was a part of this demise as traditional sawmills closed and all those little niche timber outlets were lost till we were left with good structural logs going into biomass rather than value added products.

I would say it was a significant brown rotter often causing collapse of the stem, the exposed wood then has a characteristic jeyes fluid like smell, or wind throw.Those ribs seem to run a fair way up the stem, any chance of using a resistograph or similar blunt drill or hammer? When they fruit on the ground away from the tree I suspect rotten roots. I'm seeing a few dead or dying mature pines with similar fruiting so I think the dry weather may have exacerbated the fungal attack.

Have you figured out if it can be spliced thin enough to pass through the winch? Wear an tear have taken a couple of metres off mine but I'll be long gone before it gets too short, just wondered. It's a touchy subject because a number of accidents have happened in vehicle recovery when something other than the rope has let go. I know of one fatality from back when we used nylon cable lay for climbing and old ropes were repurposed for lowering. Not a bad thing then because it took the shock out of the system (and on one occasion cause me to fly when I misjudged the branch weight). Many years ago a National Trust team were using a manual fell assist, like a tug of war, when something gave way, the attachment broke loose with a stub still tied to the rope and it was propelled onto the lad's head. Essentially this is converting stored elastic energy into kinetic energy. When used in vehicle recovery with a second vehicle it can be very useful. Kinetic Energy Recovery Ropes convert the energy of the recovering vehicle, as the stretch in the rope brings it to a halt, into an impulse that delivers more force for a short period than the traction of the recovering vehicle could exert. The timing of driving both vehicles is critical and because the forces on both vehicles is high attachments have to be stronger than static pulls. One thing when winching to pull a tree over is that after the tree has begun moving the rope goes slack as the winch cannot keep up. Then it is only the hinge (or as second rope at an angle) that keeps the tree from breaking out sideways. To mitigate this we have tried allowing the winch to hoist up a weight so its gravitational pull keeps the rope taut but one could use the elasticity in a rope to do much the same if the other problems could be addressed. Trouble is to get the most elasticity out of the rope you would tend to get a bit too close to a breaking point.

Yes and this is the sort of disagreement that can escalate into a neighbour feud so just accept that your branches have trespassed onto their property, try and negotiate a reasonable prune but if the shape of the tree is ruined then remove it. Has anyone got that picture of a front garden in suburbia where just this happened? Found it

Good to see the stickers flush with the ends of the boards too.

Generally elastic is deprecated for winching as it stores energy in the stretch, then if something it is attached to gives way it gets propelled by turning all that stored energy into kinetic energy.

That was my first thought too, not sure as it looks a bit big.

If he's keeping the oil boiler then a buffer tank isn't that necessary especially if he opts for under floor heating as the time constant on that will soak up fluctuations. Also have a look at the irish heat hero system which seems to offer a lot more functionality than shared headers (like the dunsley neutraliser) and enables a larger pump to get the heat out of a wood boiler/stove, it sounds good but I have no experience of it.

Me as long as it is cheap

I cannot help with ID but you could buy a piece of vermiculite sheet and using the old baffle somewhat as a template cut a bit to size. You will need to be more careful loading logs as it is more fragile but will not burn like your baffle has.

I have a couple but for keeping an edge not much betters the old Brades or Elwell hooks. My guess would be a TCT circular saw blade has the best output for least power and longevity between sharpens.

Cost compared with windrowing? 15 years ago I was regularly burning 300 litres of gasoil a day in either the Ahwi or Plaisance. On development sites we used a 360 to dig and clean stumps into a windrow, mulched that and it was stored on site and eventually then mixed with topsoil from the site and used in landscaping, I doubt a woodland replant could afford the luxury.

As @neiln says there is not much soot layer there to sustain a fire but it looks like a wide chimney so the flue gases will slow down a lot and cool quickly. A flexible liner prevents this and when installed properly and sealed from the house with a register plate reduces the risk of gasses percolating through poor brickwork. Whatever you decide do use a CO alarm.

As the stumps are probably waste then yes as burying or landfill of waste has been unlawful for nigh on 20 years now. However there are certain exemptions or permits available from EA for numerous activities but I'm well out of the loop now . The forestry commission dug and windrowed corsican stumps in Thetford because of fomes risk

Agreed not to rotavate because of risk of smearing and further compaction. Subsoil maybe and then chemical screefing for the planting pits, done now.

Yes and we can't have labour and SNP anyway.

So does twisting the handle throw a rod up and another down?

they have got two years to cash in before the next election

You will need someone better at accountancy than I but 5% of gross sales verses 20% of inputs suggests it is better to stay registered if your inputs are more than a fifth of your sales, aside from the current value of your assets, and if you never have outputs chargeable at 20% to private clients.

Mind if all your outputs are 5% VAT there is less advantage

may be worth deregistering then as the value of kit you have left on the books will be well written down and that value is what you will have to pay 20% on.

That doesn't show much. From the look of the mechanism turning the handle should throw bolts top and bottom. Easy enough fix for anyone with a bent to engineering. You should say approximately where you are in case there is a competent soul nearby on the forum

In the absence of an in focus close up of an individual leaf and from the fruits and paler green colour I would have said norway maple

I never missed a show up till about 2000 but I think I only noticed one gasifier and generator, it was supposed to be running a converted 6D engine but from the tarry water running from various joints it looked like they failed to get the temperature up. For gasification it needs to sit between 100-800C and that needs very dry wood, which is one reason most of the modern ones run on pellets.

Yes even though as @Stubby says ash does tend to gum up the chain it looks to me basically sharp but the chain is tight from lack of lubrication, hence friction and heating up.