jfc

I've been with treesurgeoninsurance.co.uk for a few years. Costs about £2k for pl, el, plant and tools, on about £90k turnover. Never made a claim so no idea of how good they are paying out! J.

I don't know anyone who has got their climbing ticket without the training element too. Not saying it's impossible, but if I were your assessor and knew you'd had no training I would fail you at the drop of a hat. That might just be me though... BTW nothing wrong with cutting with top of bar (pulling chain), the upper part of the tip is the kickback area but again fine to use by a competent trained user. J.

I now run a three man team, which works really well for the mainly tree work we do. Taking on guys to help has been mixed results, young guys in 20s have let me down more often than not, although most recent one was very good. Older guys in 30s with family have been most reliable for me. One thing that saved me a lot of admin time was paying for accounting software, I use quickbooks. Much quicker than spreadsheet and emailing typed invoices, also allows me to check I've been paid as it links to my business account. Hope that's some help. J.

If you live near(ish) a shop I would go try a few harnesses on and pick the best fitting. They are expensive but you should get 5 to 10yrs use from it so picking the right one is worth paying more for. There's a current post from someone who is having problems with a new harness, worth reading that post too. You may find you replace or refine a lot of early purchases as you do more and start earning better money. I tried one harness that I couldn't get on with but it was years ago and can't remember the make, it's a personal thing the fit so one man's nut crusher may be comfy as for someone else. Good luck, J.

I did the basic at a similar stage of experience. Learnt a bit and could get professional indemnity insurance to do paid surveys. I then really started to learn my fungi etc and a few years later did my pti. Really glad I had 5yrs experience behind me before sitting the pti exam, it's quite tough and they get a fair number of fails. If you are keen buy some books, Principles of tree hazard assessment, by Lonsdale. Arb assoc Arborist Fungi guide or dave humphreys new book which I've not got round to buying yet. There's a few more too but those will get you well on the right path. All the best J.

I use a cambium saver as described by Paddy, but with a triple lock krab instead of the large ring, which means you can advance it up the tree. If you are canny with the size of krab it is retrievable too. J.

Imo if he'd smashed a window in a green house you'd expect the window fixed not a new greenhouse, same with repairing the AstroTurf. A professional repair should not be noticeable.

Doesn't look suitable for cable bracing, too low and easy for people to mess with the cables imo. But happy for more knowledgeable folk to disagree with that. J.

Hi eggs, Thanks for posting that as I have been told by a tree consultant that roots only go after faulty pipes. I will have a read of it later. Cheers Jan.

Re costs of tree work. Sorry impossible to say from photos and without any spec as to what will be required or permitted. Get a tree survey done ASAP, by someone with Professional Tree Inspection certificate, prior to completion, same as any other survey on a house. Either get an Arb Consultant or a tree surgeon with PTI, a consultant will be impartial, a tree surgeon may give a better price on tree work if they have done the survey. Any recommended treework or possible tree removal costs you can try to get that reduced from cost of the purchase. Whoever does your survey should be able to give you ballpark figures for the cost of associated tree work, even if they are not a contractor. All the best, jan.

Hi, nice trees but will block a lot of light. A tree survey is definitely a good idea. FYI the max recommended reduction is 25% of leaf cover, and as diameter of cut 10cm. That will severely limit how much you can reduce the trees. Unless the tree survey identifies defects which require more drastic work. I would say you need to love having those trees, as tpo limits your options a lot. All the best, Jan.

New calls have tailed off for me too, I'm actually happy about that cos I had too much work building up. I think this time of year has been quiet before and by June or July it goes nuts again. Hopefully just a wee blip not a long term issue. Must say I wouldn't want to be quoting with only a 10 to 20% success rate. Good luck, Jan.

Pm sent with details.

Is that a picus your are wanting done? Roughly whereabouts are you? As I know a couple of guys in fife.

I think you are on a fair wage for your skills and experience. If you are with a decent company they will increase that when you have more skills and tickets, however groundie wages are not usually high even if you're amazing at it. Yeah you could earn more in retail but those jobs can be really boring at least our job is varied, challenging and sometimes exciting. If that's not worth anything to you maybe look for a different job.