maybelateron

The guy who trained me and did my Loler inspections for years was an assessor for the AA. He told me that he assessed one firm (already Arb approved) and fed back to the AA that they were not up to scratch and needed a bit of nudging at least. He said the response from the AA was along the lines of "we don't want to go upsetting people too much"

Cheers ta

Oak reduction, all handsaw cuts, nothing fatter than 40mm diameter taken off. Quite challenging, also pretty pointless in my view but customer wanted it doing and happy to pay.

Totally agree with you with regards to Safecontractor. I am coming to the end of my final year bothering with Safecontractor now the only commercial work I do is for two local parish councils. Ten years ago I had to get accredited with them for a contract I had. The only thing it proved was that I could say the right things and fill out forms correctly, in addition to having the certificates I need anyway. I could not believe when I had a phone call to say they were nearly ready to sign me up, but I needed to submit my scaffolding erectors certificate. When I asked why the young man said for when I was working on trees. How on earth can an office based excercise which asks such a stupid question really say I am a safe contractor?

64 plate Iveco Daily 3.5 ton 20-21mpg usually towing 1.5 ton chipper 04 plate remapped Disco 2 auto 21 mpg often towing Series 3 Land Rover with 2.5 NA Diesel, who knows what mpg Wife's all electric Hyundai recently did 140 mile trip on £4, using our Octopus energy electricity. Even cheaper in summer from our photovoltaic panels! Just a pity decent size vans/tippers can't have such nice economy, but I guess moving trees from A to B needs lots of energy, as does towing MEWPs chippers etc

Very true, and long dangly beans!

Tree is way way older than the houses. This estate was built around the turn of the milleneum in the grounds of the former county "asylum". Lots of wonderful trees on the site. Also many residents who buy a house on the estate then complain about the massive tree overhanging their house etc, when conveyancing would show said tree was protected. I have a good working relationship with the local TO, and I really feel for him when what he really wants to say to moaning householders is " you knew the protected tree was there before you bought the house, so NO you can't take it down, the tree is as safe as a tree can be". The whole site was subjected to a blanket TPO around year 2000 to stop the developers taking down an excess number of trees.

I know that tree very well indeed. I use to do the grounds maintenance at St Edwards Park, Cheddleton. Without doubt it is an Indian Bean Tree, aka Catalpa. I have looked at it in the past with Steve Massey from SMDC, and worked on it. I suspect it has been in slow decline for some time. Catalpa are always later than Ash to come into leaf, and every year it is easy to think they have died. Tim - I am Charles Piggott, Moorlands Tree and Groundcare

Buxtons supply them: https://www.buxtons.net/workwear-clothing-ppe/clothing/clothing-accessories/stihl-ms-protect-arm-guards

I have two grinders. One that fits on the arm of my mini digger (Bobcat E10z). This is a multi tip wheel and teeth mounted in a purpose built frame with a V twin Honda engine mounted above it. The reason it has its own engine is that the smaller diggers don't have enough oil flow to make it work well. The teeth are easy to change with just one bolt to undo. The teeth are also easy to sharpen with a diamond wheel, if you wish to do so. My other grinder that I use more, as it is less of a faff to get to the job/mount on the digger arm, is the Rock Machinery SGR 33 model. I think this represents excellent value, and I have always found them to be a very decent firm to deal with. This uses "Green" teeth, which are available from Rock, but also other outlets. They can be turned 120 degrees VERY quickly on site and have 3 cutting faces before needing replacing or sharpening. It is more complicated to sharpen these due to their profile, so I just replace them as needed, as I don't do lots of stumps. If I had wanted to invest more funds I would have gone for one of the FSI models, as a guy from Stumpbusters whose opinion I value says FSI are good quality, whereas he said if you but a Predator you need to be good with spanners and a welder (his words, not mine)

I certainly am, every day. I feel we owe it to the Ukrainians, and would feel disrespectful to them to not follow it closely. As far as I am concerned this is all too reminiscent of Hitler and ww2, not that I was alive in that era. If we don't actively support them with arms etc we have only ourselves to blame if Putin crushes them then moves west into more of eastern Europe.

I managed to sell sections of one MP for a reasonable price on ebay. No takers for the next one so it went to bio mass - pity that.

If you have plenty of work, leave the pain for someone else 😂

Another rule I have learnt with working on these vicious trees is wear your oldest trousers and tops - the "sap" is more like super powerful contact adhesive that had crossbred with araldite and PVA!

Agreed on point one. The local firm I use work from street view +/- local knowledge. Never been asked for a site visit/quote fee. On point two I'm sure a lot of customers, certainly domestic ones, don't have a clue/don't care what TM is used. Any customer who wants to cut cost by dubious or zero TM does not get the job done by us.

Thank you for telling us of this very sad major trauma, and your candour with respect to the cause of it. I wish you all the best for your recovery and the future.

Needless to say quoting on Monkey Puzzle work gets an automatic multiplication factor. As indeed should mixed thorn hedge reductions💩

The one time I had to climb a MP (as opposed to using my MEWP) it was overhanging a conservatory. I took leather gloves up with me and when I needed to saw a branch off I would put on one leather glove to hold the branch I was cutting. So just to spite me the tree decided to puncture a vein in my arm with one of its "leaves". Surprisingly this was not very painful compared to the Blackthorn reaction I am nursing right now from an attack on the back of a knuckle. I think the key is that it hurts more when the tissues are tighter with less room to accomodate the swelling.

Agree with all the very sensible comments so far. My wife wanted to go electric, so she now has a Hyundai Ionic5. It is a very nice car to drive in most ways, but I will not drive it on my own at night unless weather conditions are such that I won't need to adjust demister/climate settings. It has a touch screen for all of these functions. Yes, it can be voice activated, but this does not always work, and I can't read the crib sheet in the dark, to tell me what words/phrases to use. End result is that in bad weather/darkness I will take my 23 year old TD5 Disco 2 out and burn lots of diesel, but feel safer with respect to myself AND other road users. "Sorry I crashed into your car and gave you life changing injuries, I was trying to use the demister to clear the screen so I could drive safely".

Glad you have made this point. I recently changed my twin axle 12ft plant trailer to a 16ft tri axle one, to accomodate my new spider MEWP. I shall be particularly careful reversing on any uneven ground.

Back in the 70's when I was a teenager working on the farm over the road the farmer once managed to reverse two turntable front axle haycarts, one behind the other. Took a couple of shunts admittedly, but he did it. A truly dark art if ever there was one.

Is the cause of the split in the trunk known? The only time I have seen that in an Oak was on a very large one where we know it was caused by a single massive lighting strike that split a trunk of about 6ft diameter and tore out one of the three main stems at its origin, 21 inch diameter .

Nothing wrong with using a MEWP. Tell the eye roller to climb it herself if she thinks MEWPs are inappropriate!

Can't beat word of mouth recommendations. Other than that I use Yell.com I don't bother with Facebook at all. We are 95 per cent domestic, and this generally means working for people in middle age and beyond, ie those who own a property with trees big enough to need arb workers. As a (?late) middle ager myself I tend to regard Facebook as a less serious/professional advertsing source than Yell/your own website.

I have the stein RC3001 bollard kit which is excellent. I also use a Stein Omega 10mm rope (not on the bollard) for a lot of natural crotch rigging, as I find it quite good at resisting abrasion compared to the Yale double esterlon we use on a portawrap or the bollard. The Omega is also quite cheap compared to many lines.