Andrew McEwan

Did the AA demo involve showing HSE what two roped pruning, dismantling and actual cutting actually looked liked and the problems it creates? Or was it some guys flying up and down on their rope wrenches srt rec climbing and asserting 'this is fine' to HSE? If so I can see why it might not have gone down well.

PUWER, and happily give them a quick file, just like you would with a saw in similar use, takes seconds, cost ~£11 if memory serves imagine if you ding a tft on site it needs changing?

Surely that is a more risky reinvention of a standard clearing saw blade? Standard ones have basic chainsaw type cutters that you sharpen as normal and are one piece construction, work well cutting scrub or re-spacing regen, I've used them on the husky 555, something for large machines only.

Maybe try and find a clean husky 350, and if not quick enough get Spud to port it, my ported one is ok on an 18 but obviously better on 15, and certainly lighter than my 550, with same nice handling/balance and flickability with better hot starting.

What was the difference in dbh between the two visits Steve? And how many reductions?

Forgot to say I have the side control kit for the crane if you want to get your FMOC with it, as well as lots of other random kit like forklift, towing T bar etc, and can until the trailer goes can help with delivery. I'm not a machinery trainer but also happy if someone is new to the kit to spend time showing them round it, moving some logs round the yard etc.

At the risk of turning this into a for sale thread I'm also very regrettably shutting up shop on the alpine tractor side of my business, first few implement adverts on arbtrader today but all the kit is going. Based around a low hours 2014 AGT850, it has been my ideal setup and excelled itself on rural arb and small forestry jobs. Fast across sites, and about as much tractor power (+ an implement) as you can move easily with a 3.5ton towing set up, the TP chipper on it is faster that a lot of 8inch road tows, and the winch and skidding grapples speed and power saves a lot of time on the right jobs, also has very recent AGT front 3pl kit and hydraulics. Lots of photos on mcewanforestry on FB, but the kit list is (all new to me) AGT850, TP175 pto chipper, Country 3.9m crane and trailer, RSL skidding grapple, Balfour 9 ton splitter, Uniforest 35m pto winch, Dragone140 flail and an ifor GP146 tri axle. I'm only selling to help get on the housing ladder and plan to focus on my consultancy work and smaller contracting jobs. A lot of thought and far too much research went into the set up, and it's all the best kit for the task that I could find. Ideally I'd keep it all to retirement, but can't justify it, and hopefully the set up or parts of it will be as much of an asset to another business as it has been to mine.

To fill your person spec and get someone decent I think you need to up the ££.

Still not a helpful original spec then, as you have to consider the risk of whiplash failure with those long static cable runs. I'd say with old high up steel cable it's even more important to consider installing upper synthetic cable, and same advice about aerial resistograph and winch testing first. Also don't need to tell you of the impact of repeated reductions on the trees ability to lay down new tissue to cope with the altered loading from static bracing. Minor extra point, have seen a fair few steel cable installs done with incorrect clamping, so would be dubious if they would hold under a big whiplash load anyway, worth checking for.

I would be taking my resistograph up there on that kind of aerial inspection, and also some rachet straps/small winch. Both to test the areas and unions around the rods. Have often recommended and installed sythentic bracing above old rods to reduce failure risk. From the your description rods weren't the right way to go to start with, best left for short span/lower down codominant issues if they are used at all.

Lets take a decay prone species and reduce it's crown so much that it knackers the ability to lay down new tissue around any basal defect, clever!

It can act as a fairly benign saprotroph, but have seen a lot of purple plum with it near the end of things, is it growing in the lawn? treat it to a nice mulch round the base?

Likely Phellinus pomaceus Steve, maybe some tlc could help but likely for the firewood/tuning pile if it's dropping limbs.

I use Otiss software, and pretty happy with it. I learnt a lot about arb and forestry consultancy from working within a company before setting up on my own, worth a thought if you've not already done it that way. Best of luck with it

Did you drill it as well Steve?

Suspect insurance companies will refer to this from HSE, interpreted to suit. "Although the competent person may often be employed by another organisation, this is not necessary, provided they are sufficiently independent and impartial to ensure that in-house examinations are made without fear or favour. However, this should not be the same person who undertakes routine maintenance of the equipment - as they would then be responsible for assessing their own maintenance work. "

You could try Dan at https://macintyre-trees.co.uk/

I'm more cynical and think the poplar was perhaps just the incident that crew didn't get away with, but either way if you view it as an exceptional case it shows the AAC sampling plan is missing those crews operating like that. I suspect you don't need me to give a run through of how to run certification to any particular standard, but any work like that is only as good as the sampling plan you start off with as per ISO 17021. Re the work diary, nice to hear you are able to have some flexible visits, but if AAC needs to sample rigging activities the assessors sampling plan needs to reflect that and request that info. I think most contractors would mainly know where a rigging kit is going to come out beforehand.

Thanks Paul, interesting to see Bartletts at least got a £24K fine from HSE. Has the AA reviewed how the AAC scheme is assessed in light of the incident? Clients could be forgiven for thinking that AAC assessment isn't spotting serious short comings in contractors operations, if the poplar incident could occur in the first place. The main improvement I have heard discussed is prior to site assessment it being necessary to submit a booked work diary, enabling AA assessors to choose a job and site at random, and turn up to see more of a true reflection of a contractors staff and operations rather than a staged/planned visit.

Hi Paul, Apologies if I have missed it elsewhere , but could you update the arbtalk masses on the Bartletts poplar incident and the AA response, and are they still using AAC status to complete tenders and as a mark of their quality?

old dive mask in the shower as big daily eye bath/sluice, and optrex, good luck with eyeballs

Just standard spout on mine Ken as it is the pto verision, (sorry should've said) and is behind a 50hp alpine so doesn't slow for much. There is a vid on fb of it on some billets we had to chip, and they are nicely made and laid out, and nice to get a galv chassis, are you adding to the fleet or thinking of chopping in the quadchip?

I've not tried the Courant, but have been happy with the other two, I think any unicore line is worth having as a step up in safety if you had a mishap with it.

Did you look at the TP175? have been impressed with mine, solid fast chipper

I have a jacket and old wax cotton beaters chaps I spray in permethrin for bad forestry survey jobs, can be hideous with ticks in thicket stage stuff, you can see insects dying on contact with it, not very nice but works.