Paul in the woods

I though 'act of god' was to exclude extreme events such as hurricanes rather than your average winter gale. If the damage is very costly then it might be worth going through the policies carefully to see if the damage is actually excluded.

I've just picked up a can of Stihl Motomix and noticed in the shop it was not sealed. I asked and apparently all their stock wasn't sealed either. Pics on the Stihl site show the cap with a tamper proof seal at the bottom of the cap. Anyone bought one of the new orange cans of Motomix and, if so, was it sealed?

It might be worth reading the RHS advice here: https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?PID=63 Some varieties are more susceptible than others but worth noting about drainage and liming acidic soil.

Is there a specific name for this map? I'm having an issue with my highways dept where they seem to change their mind on the ownership of a piece of land when it suits them. When we met they had a copy of their highways maps that seemed to bear little relation to the land at all, probably because it was based on something decades old. Even the features were exaggerated as they are on OS maps so it was of little use to identify ownership. It would be handy to know if they have a specific system or map I can ask for.

I've got a few rats running about, if anyone fancies one for their kitchen and a cuddle on the sofa them post up your address and I'll pop them in the post.

Isn't juglone only toxic to plants? It appears to be used in food and cosmetics, so I would have thought you've be more at risk from normal woodsmoke. You may be at risk from irate wood turners though if you burn any decent bits.

The council will not be deciding but if you force them to document something they may well be forced to agree the tree is theirs. The Land Reg may not always be able to accurate decide as they simply cannot know. For example, I've bought a piece of woodland that was split from a larger farm and the land registry only have the plans the vendor and I supplied during the sale process which it would not be possible to accurately decide boundaries if the fences were removed. All they have is a map with a red line which would translate to 1-2m on the ground.

I'm currently having the opposite problem with a council. Anyway, apparently my council does have the ability to accurately determine the boundary so I'd ask for a definitive boundary line from the council in writing, reserving the right to claim back costs from the council if they get it wrong. Land Reg documents can help but if the tree is close to the boundary they may not provide an accurate line, more a rough 1m guide. The fence may well be documented. Certainly worth getting as it'll be cheaper than sorting the tree.

Might be a good question for another thread. I would have thought with Ivy a large number of birds and other wildlife feed on it so it gets a fair bit of natural fertiliser, but as bird numbers are declining it'll get less? Perhaps attitudes have changed and it's not as frequently removed? As for brambles, I've found deer love them but if you exclude deer they can grow out of control. That's not to say there's not a huge problem with fertiliser and slurry run off.

The Kellfri does look very similar, same engine by the look of it, but the specs are slightly different. I do have the 60cm bucket but haven't used it yet as I use the 35cm one all the time. I've not taken any videos although there a few online. The tracked kit looks interesting, about twice the price but I would be tempted as it would be much easier to move about. On the other hand for a bit more you could get a bigger 2nd hand machine...

Yes, I bought the Jansen. It's been fine for my needs and has coped a little better than expected. It has dug over an area of ground that had a lot of bramble roots and blackthorn stumps and with a little experience has dug them out easily. It's powerful enough but could do with more weight over the back which is easily sorted. Walking it about is slow and a bit of pain obviously and I'd like more side to side range. My main problems were the instructions. In the end one of the hydraulic connections didn't seal fully but not being experienced I didn't know if it was my fault or not. It would have been good to have either a tightening procedure or a torque setting and I didn't find the makers/suppliers very helpful when asked. In the end they sent a replacement hose and connector FOC which solved the problem. The trailer hitch was also faulty which again was replaced quickly FOC. I'm not sure how robust it will be long term but so far I'm happy considering the price.

At a guess it'll be some sort of leaf cutter bee. I've had a few make their home in the cool green house this year, I often see them flying about with a bit of leaf and see neat holes cut in the edges leaves.

I think the amount of time you have free to manage it might be more of an issue with a small amount. Cost wise, using the iWeb company mentioned earlier, if you opened and Stocks and Shares ISA it would cost you £25 to open an account and then £5 when you bought a fund assuming there's no initial commission. If you put in £3000 and the annual charge of the fund/s you invest in is 1% then you'll be paying about £90 a year which will rise or fall depending on the growth. Carefully choosing your provider and funds will take time though, so I think it is only worth doing if you intend to invest a fair bit or over time.

I am also be happy to pay a high fee for high growth. However, it often tends to be the case that lower fee funds (e.g. simple trackers) outperform higher fee funds. It also used to be the case you'd get a better deal via a broker than going direct to a fund manager. Something to check when you've decided what you want to invest in. Thing is at 50 I would expect someone to be going for safer investments, ones returning say 5-7% on average. This is where a small difference in fees will have a noticeable impact.

It depends on what you hold. A quick glance shows a £5 dealing fee from iWeb but if you buy a fund there may be an initial charge from the manager of that fund and an ongoing fund charge. Looking at a few funds they seem to be 0 initial charge but 0.5 - 1.0% AMC. See: http://www.iweb-sharedealing.co.uk/PDFs/CostsAndCharges.pdf

There are charges for stocks and share ISAs as well which can be more than a pension. A stakeholder pension will have annual charges capped at 1.5% of the fund value, and providers will often offer lower fees of around 1%. A stocks and share ISA may have an initial fee, around 5%, and an annual fee of around 1.5%. If you carefully shop around there are platforms that will rebate the initial fee and some of the AMC. Put simply the fees can be very similar between pensions and stocks and share ISAs.

Thanks Spud, I'll give that a go. Thanks also for the TT-20K recommendation in other threads, you should be on commission.

Interesting thread. I've run General Grabber AT2s on my small 4x4 for 7 years now and not really had a problem. New they were fine in the snow, although I tended to avoid driving in snow and ice as there were too many other people skidding all over the place. They've been fine on wet and very muddy/slurry covered roads and have only just started to struggle on very muddy tracks due to wear. They've don't do motorway miles and are narrow at 225/70 R15. Sorry, not much help for the original question.

Thank you both. It's not that cold here so I don't think it's the weather. It's the first time I've tached a saw so I'm learning what to do. So, tach after following the warm up procedure rather than taching a very hot saw after cutting a ton of logs? The other thing that surprises me is how uneven the revs are but I'm much more used to cars and mowers.

In Woodworks' case a pension might be better as he may not be saving a vast amount and with savings and state pension may not have much taxable income in retirement. It would be worth getting an estimate of his state pension and doing some sums.

You can shop around for an annuity and not all providers make huge profits on them. £5k a year from £100k sounds about right as your life expectancy at 65 will be around another 20 years (100 / 20 = 5). The problem at the moment, well for the last decade, has been low interest rates.

I've been checking the revs on my little Echo saw, I followed the carb adjustment procedure for bringing the saw up to temp which involves a couple of minutes of switching from idle to full throttle to idle etc. Then checked the max revs which were about 12,000, so under the max revs listed in the user guide of 12,500. So far so good. However, I decided to check them again after using the saw for a bit of logging and noted the max revs were over 12,500 although only by 100rpm. I assume this is to be expected, i.e. after a fair bit of use the revs may well be higher than when a saw is tuned at service? Also would a saw be able to cope better with revving slightly over maximum revs if a good quality 2-stroke oil is used?

Who was that with if you don't mind saying. First thing to know is the ISA is just a savings vehicle and so is a pension. Once your money is in there you can save it in various things which will have their own risks and rewards. So you could save £100 in each and invest them in very similar funds; some will be very low risk and low growth, others offer a chance of a much higher growth rate but there's a risk of losing what you put in.

Depends what you mean about financial advice, the government site I posted to explains what options there are to save, not what current share, bond, ETF or whatever to save in. As they wrote the laws they seem a reasonable place to start unless you know of somewhere better?

How much do you know? Although I bet there's loads of people in your situation I couldn't find any specific advice when I had a look. I expect the main decision is do you invest in a pension or ISA, both have their good and bad points. You could start off looking through the Governments advice service and get an estimate of what your pension will be. https://www.moneyadviceservice.org.uk/en/categories/pensions-and-retirement Then decide how much you think you can save each month. Take care if you decide to pay for advice.