Pedroski

DMM. I love my DMM bits. I even dream about sleeping in my DMM Renegade harness - yeah I know the harness isn't tree specific, but I climb for fun and don't do saw stuff in trees myself. And I dream of attaching my DMM krabs to things. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Well, this is the thing. Customer want felled, FC bloke wanted pollarded. And I know pollarding will kill an old pop like that, so gawd knows why FC bloke suggested pollard. Once we had a proper gander up top though, it was clear that there was no point in doing what we wanted, which was reduction in height and drop-crotch pruning of side branches as the whole lot is already well on its way out. We're hoping customer gets felling licence granted again in new year as otherwise he's going to end up with a quartet of telegraph poles!

In picture below, it's the furthest one away toward left (looks small that the others.... but only due to perspective!). pollarded at crotch where that lower horizontal branch comes out - that was one massive beggar!

Yep, I know. I'll see if I can get an extra 20/day in new year.... What makes it hard is that he's a mate I've been mates with since we were kids, and you kind of have faith in people. He helped me out with work while I was doing uni and things would have been really hard otherwise. Will see what happens. Here's a pic of the pops.... the one we just did is the pollard toward the left. This had huge branches all on left hand side and out over field entrance and road. The others coming up in new year. Height over 100ft, so we're kind of halving them. They all have so much rot in top, and one has masses of woodpecker damage.

Steve, I often do a big chunk of the headache stuff. The thing that galls me is lack of financial acknowledgement for supplying all my own Stihl gear, all my own PPE, my own transport, and so on. Also, remember I'm self-employed - so I'm saving mate the "headache" of paying my tax and NI, and the "headache" of giving me paid holiday and sick pay and all the other stuff he'd have to put up with if I was actually an employee. I save him so many headaches. Yet he will pay his father or his brother £150+/day on the rare time we have to have them on a job. I really do believe he's having a laugh. BTW, I picked up cheque today for £1750 - shame it's post-dated to 23rd!

Hydraulic. But they can be noisy on start up while pressure building. What's up?

Why do people have tails so short on a fishermans?

I'll send you a cheque immediately....... It's ok if I post-date it to the new year, yep?

Put a band around the loop of the bowline to keep it all tidy then nothing will poke through it.

Stephen, I really appreciate your advice. Thank you

first smile of the day! I called him up this morning to let him know how I feel, and he apologised for not having sorted out everything sooner. He promised to drop a cheque round to his neighbour (who is my mate) before going. Just waiting for my mate to call to let me know whether or not he did. He asked if it was ok to post date cheque for 23rd. I said not really, to which he said that there won't be money in the account until then when he has transferred it anyway. At least with a cheque in hand I suppose I'll be on the creditors list if anything happens to him! Fingers crossed it doesn't get to that though.

Like I said, the reason I can't wait 30 days is that I'm just starting to get some work off my own back to get out of the £100/day minus expenses minus tax minus NI rutt that I've been stuck in for too long and is causing me to get poorer and poorer. Once I've got a few more jobs under my belt and a bit more money in the bank then I can afford to allow people time to pay, but even then I think for a small business 30 days wait is unreasonable. Also, this bloke had agreed to my quote and wanted the work done urgently. If I do something urgently for him, then the least he should do is pay promptly.

Did one last year - similar height but only about 60ft long. Again, 7 or 8 feet off the top. All wood had to be dragged 60ft up the garden, through garage, out to road where we had the chipper. I climbed up the conifers at one end and did all cutting using a Silky for close in and a pole saw to reach further out, and a set of pole loppers to tidy up. Mate dragged stuff out and chipped most, and we finished chipping together at end. Also tidied sides using hedgecutter attachment on the long reach pole. I priced it at £450 for one day for the two of us, including taking all the chip away. By the end of the day I was kicking myself for not pricing it for an extra half day cos we were proper knackered and didn't get done till 6 or so (good job it was summer). If you can get a platform in, and the chipper (provided it's a good chipper and not some thing you can only put little sticks in!), and you're leaving everything there, then 2 to 3 days would make your life easy.

Just sent customer an email and will try calling him shortly.... as it's just dawned on me that he's over 70 and going off skiing for the week and I'll have a right load of hassle getting paid if he gets hurt.

Olive oil does good. Chain oil seems to work well too.

Man, you're opening another can of worms that I'm finding hard to swallow at the moment I'm self employed, working 99% of the time for a mate's firm doing landscaping work. I get £100/day out of which I pay my own expenses, tax, NI etc, and take unpaid holiday time, while I'm charged out at just under £200/day. So firm makes £100/day out of me (before corporation tax), while I end up with £55-£70 to support family after I've paid my expenses and taxes. I also supply some of my own tools (hedgecutter, strimmer etc). Firm doing well. Good turnover, and the accompanying big tax bills. I moan about the money I get. Mate claims to take not much more than me, conveniently ignoring the fact that his tax is paid by the firm, as are his expenses, as is fuel for the family motor, etc, so in reality I probably end up with about half or less of what he does. When I moan about my tax bill he says he wishes his was as small as mine....again conveniently ignoring the fact that his tax is paid by the firm and doesn't come off what he takes as a wage. I'm working my bollocks off day in day out making more for a mate than I get myself, and after all these years it's getting to me. Never ever ever let him down, amd beginning to feel that for too long I've just been too grateful of the work. So finally, the chance came along to quote for some work myself, all ok'd with my mate and lots of notice given. Put a good price in, mate got bit stroppy despite the fact he had plenty to do elsewhere as he wasn't needed on this job. All looking good. Thoughts of money in bank to tide me over while mate goes on hol for 2 weeks, and money to pay my tax bill. Then the flippin' customer delays me a week or more. Does wonders for my confidence, NOT. Christ, I'm mid 40s, highly qualified, recent B.Sc. and D.Phil and struggling to support family, pay mortgage etc, on £55-70/day. I know times are hard, but when people rub my nose in it (whether it's a customer mucking me about, or mate saying I should be grateful for a small tax bill and saying "money isn't everything"), I just wanna explode!

Stephen Blair, thanks for the advice - it's something I'll definitely think about more. I know this bloke has the money to pay, and like you say, his holiday spending money for this coming week has taken priority over what he owes me for work he has already done. I'm really kicking myself now, but I let my guard down as he is a neighbour of a friend and was pretty easy going at the quote stage with no sourcing of other quotes to get my price down! Next time he'll have to be cash up front, and I'll be stating payment terms in no uncertain terms on other quotes.

Thanks everyone for your thoughts. The cash flow thing for a week isn't really a big deal as I have a spare couple of grand. But what hacks me off a bit is that I got the job in asap for him as: a) he was getting pressured by a bloke whose house adjoins his field and who was worried that the one 120ft poplar was unsafe and wanted it done pronto b) he told me he was going away for a week on Thursday this week and asked me specifically to do it at the beginning of the week so it was done before he went. Stupid me, assuming that sorting everything out asap for him would also mean he paid me asap....I withdrew £800 from the bank yesterday and paid wages for the job! Still, that's life I guess. I knocked his door just now and gave him a proper invoice. He said again he'll pay me as soon as he's back. I asked if he could give me a cheque before going but he said he needs to transfer money from one of those accounts where you have to give a few days notice to withdraw funds. I really don't want to push it at the moment as the work done so far is just the first stage of other work he wants doing after the new year, so I'm going to just try and chill about it now

Those ones who send you an email to say how pleased they are with your hard work.....and then say they'll pay you when they come back from holiday next week....... Nice.

Don't buy non-workwear clothes. Just get smart workwear as business expenses and use it for the weekends and going out and stuff. Again, low profit, lower tax to pay.

We had a laff today. Huge (hundreds of kg) massive long heavy branch of a poplar, 50ft above a 5 bar gate in field entrance. Tied it off close to trunk, lowering rope over crutch, twice round trunk, across to another tree and twice round that. I was just looking at the branch, and the gate, and the branch again. Thinking all would be good and gate would be fine when branch was swung down. But then I stopped the bloke up the tree. Decided to get my spanner out and remove the gate just in case the branch swung and swiped the top of it. Gate off, bloke back on the saw, branch starts to go, me and other groundy heaving on rope...... no movement at all but CRASH.... branch fell straight down and hit the deck. Right where the gate would have been. The frickin' pop split at the cut and the branch came straight down leaving the rope securely tied to a stub at the trunk.... Soooo glad I took that gate off at the last moment!

Better still, drop the book keeper/accountant, and get your wife/partner/family member down as the person you have paid to do your books....even if you do your own self assessment. The other half only has to look after your receipts or something, and you can pay them, which means it then comes off your profits. You pay a bit less tax, so long as you pay your wife/partner less than their personal allowance then they won't pay any tax. Networking as well.... good way to get jobs without paying for advertising. Talk to friends and friends of friends and parents of your kid's friends and other parents at your kid's football training etc.

Trango Cinch is supposed to be (AFAIK) used on dynamic ropes only.

Fair points Spud. I guess we've just been lucky, and also knowing what had caused the failure meant we didn't end up with the same failure when repaired.

Encourage payment by internet banking - gets money into your account quicker, and funds are cleared straight away. Saves money especially if you're running in an overdraft and no having to spend money on fuel to bank cheques.