Gary Prentice

But there are consequences of trying to set new speed records @kevinjohnsonmbe

You do know that trees account for, on average, six fatalities per year. Compare that that to traffic accidents, falling under tube trains and down stairs.

Not impressed. 16 year old lads are doing close to that... with trailers, round here.

Not surprised at all. Three of us strimmed metre circles in long grass and planted a whip in the centre one spring. Did maybe 800 trees. Three months later the parks lads mowed the lot with a gang mower. Tree manager 'forgot' to tell 'grounds maintenance manager'

Tried that once..... Cut the sides of my mouth to ribbons

I have read that a healthy tree may live in harmony with this for decades Mick. As usual there are loads of ifs and buts. I think that there may even be different colonisation rates even between the red and white side of the genus - nothing is ever straight forward but I don't think that it's one that you need to be evacuating people for as soon as you spot it. "I have made errors before!" Haven't we all?

Bit late now, it's on t web

Being a pedant.... Only if you use the appropriate depth of cellweb. Different thickness have different ratings, IIRC 100-150 depth is good for cars and light vans, heavier than that you need the deeper thicknesses. One of their reps did a workshop at my LA a year or two back, worth getting to one if you ever get the chance.

try Cellweb TRP

Depend on his profit margin. It's always about the bottom line.

Only a mechanic who actually looked after and regularly serviced a saw would expect that. The rest of us who operate on the principle that fuelling and sharpening are maintenance tasks, think we're doing well getting 5+ years from a brand new saw

Frustrating isn't it! If an LA consistently exceeds eight weeks I'd advise chucking in an appeal immediately. I know it's more work for you but they'll soon get the idea that you're prepared to go the whole hog when they're tardy. PINS will, I assume. get fed up with a raft of non-determination appeals from that particular authority too. I eventually went to the CEO of one council, within three months the planning officer involved stopped dealing with tree apps and the job got took on by a TO who is just simply marvellous (I tell him so, and his department head, frequently). I actually got a consent on a TPO'd development site within 24 hours a few weeks ago. Tree contractors were being held up from completing after a couple of Ash with chalara were identified (No symptoms last year when I did the survey), so I asked if he could possibly expedite the determination. I wasn't expecting the following day. On the other hand, if he's late on a determination, like you I accept he's workload and defend him to my clients, we're all human. I've never been refused a site meeting pre-app, with any council. I suggest that they'll have to visit eventually but if they'll meet first things like pruning spec's can be agreed and then they don't have to come again. If they don't meet, then they may have to write a refusal and deal with a second application afterwards. No-one wants to potentially create more work than necessary and it's hard to object to my reasoning (None of these LAs currently charge for pre-apps fortunately - that might change in the future)

Whatever floats your boat!

How do you do that? Go back through thirteen months of posts to find what you're looking for? My missus is like that in a disagreement, she'll move heaven and earth, waste endless time and energy, just to prove that she's right or to make a point.

When you say new plugs, do you mean brand new, out of the box new? I've had 3 out of a box that didn't spark at all. Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but are you actually getting a spark? I've had plugs that spark outside the cylinder, when tested, but then didn't appear to spark under compression. For testing I'd always use a plug from a good running saw - just for elimination purposes. Then if it still won't attempt to fire, even to cough the problem's elsewhere. Sheared key or something like that.

If your experience is that 'transportation' damages them, you can't have staff! IME the person paying for tools and equipment seldom damages them. Inexplicably items used by others just seem to fall apart.

I'm assuming that you're not from a arb background, but if I'm teaching my grandmother.. I'm sorry. Most tree roots will be found in the top 300mm of soil. On some soils a single vehicle pass will damage roots due either to shearing stresses or by soil compaction ( compressing/compacting the soil to an extent that inhibits physical root growth and/or the permeation of moisture and air.) I think that the higher the clay content/smaller the soil particle size is, the greater the risk of damage - so on a sandy soil you might be dodging a bullet a bit as to damaging the roots But avoid digging, you will damage the fine 'feeding roots' that these trees rely on. It would be safer to use Cellweb than grids, I'm pretty sure that councils don't accept grids as a satisfactory means of protecting tree roots from traffic, but I stand to be corrected on this, it's just in my experience.

You probably realise that you don't get subsidence with trees on sandy soils? Ergo, no heave if you remove trees, which then allows a desiccated soil to expand i.e. heave. I'm not really following where you're intending to create new parking areas from the photo, but to avoid digging the common way forward to avoid damage to tree roots (no-dig solution) would be Cell TRP. For cars & light vans only, the minimum thickness is 100-150mm - straight on top of the existing soil. Layer of geotextile then permeable surface on top. Cellweb guarantee that it prevents damage to trees, I think that they'll if defend against TPO contravention claims when it's installed properly, so they're pretty confident. I can't remember now but I think I've read about some issues with the geogrid parking grids still causing damage to the underlying tree roots. Don't quote me on that though, just something in the deep dark recesses of my mind.

Sounds strange, after we felled trees, and treated stumps, on a steep chalky embankment we had to go back and pull the stumps out as they came loose several years later. Remember when the railway was built there were no trees and kept that way by the deveg gangs Strange to me too. IIRC someone mentioned about how stumps of infected trees were coppicing the following year, before that foliage got re-infected. I'd imagine the remaining roots would stabilise the bank for a number of years while nature took its course and new self-seeded saplings became established. As a sidebar Paul, when did you become qualified enough in geology/geography to determine where the angle of repose would lead to slippage?

I think that the rapidity at which it's spread has caught some LAs with their trousers down. At least that's my experience locally. None of the Manchester area authorities are doing anything yet to advise private owners on their websites. My own local tree officer asked me to report to him any particularly bad trees, private or their own, which could pose a hazard to the highway. They're trying to evaluate their own stock asap because previous highway inspections were zoned on highway usage, a residential street might only be inspected every four to five years but the speed at which this is spreading through the crown, at least here this year, means that the more or less need to look at all highway ash this year. You can sort of understand why no-one is spending time and/or money on advising the public. Maybe everyone arb contractor should be adding something themselves to their own websites to publicise the problem!

I've even known architects to suffer 'tree blindness' when filling in planning applications. A bit shameful when the application is then refused after the LA notice half a dozen seventy foot trees ten foot from the proposed construction.

Have you got a copy of the AAs terms and conditions for Arb consultants? The best £25 or so that you'll ever spend. Arboricultural Association - Guidance Note 9 WWW.TREES.ORG.UK A source of publications, guidance notes and leaflets for arboriculturists. Competitively priced available to members... Not ducking the question but H&S becomes so involved once you're trying to cover yourself because you end up introducing everything that you consider in your decision making process. ( occupation frequency/ fixed targets and their value/ size of part likely to fail etc etc) If you're not careful the client holds you responsible for the 1" diameter/<1m dead branch that you didn't see in the dense foliage that then cracks the pane in his greenhouse.)

I don't disagree,at all, with anything that you are saying here. All we can do is point out that there is a potential of failure at an included union, we can't reasonably predict in most circumstances if it will or won't. It's the clients level of risk aversion which ultimately decides whether action is taken.

I met him at a conference one year. Enlightening and definitely outspoken in his criticism of the lack of pruning by the nursery trade I particularly liked his attitude of pruning at planting time, to create a good scaffold structure - even if it meant removing 50+% of the foliage. The faces of some of the delegates was just priceless once he demonstrated with his secateurs. Sorry Andrew, I think that you're missing my point. Wander through a beech would and you'll see included bark union after union and evidence of historic failures. We know that they have a potential to fail, each different (for all the reasons you've stated above) and that that potential will change with changes in their surroundings etc. But if you could positively identify which will fail, under given circumstances - humidity, wind-speed/direction, and which won't - then, and only then would you know whether bracing/pruning/subordination etc had actually made them safer. I acknowledge that any tree can be made 'safer' by bracing and/or pruning - but unless you can guarantee that it will fail without action, have you actually made it safer or just spent the owners money?