Steven P

Anyone got any wood chip from Birmingham to Hexham? Any area in that is good, probably east from Norwich and west to Cockermouth as well. 25 tonnes - I guess OP is collecting else they'd be more specific as to the location?

My view - too small to be used as 'logs' so a branch logger as suggested perhaps the best way. You can make money from them otherways, however do you have the time to do anything with it, or just 'get them out the way quick' type of thing? (might be you look at turning them into charcoal - get someone in to do this, sell it onward to the glamping, or just as it comes, probably able to cut them up to lengths and flog lengths of wood as 'artists materials' - basket weaving perhaps, but with all of this it adds time and effort for an unknown return. Id go "Turn into smaller branches and burn")

Storage heater but with fire as the heat source and not electric element.

Well, what d'you know, in Edinburgh and getting London rates, but only asked to supply man + saw. Not man + 100k worth of kit.

part time hobby or full time business?

My accountant would know how long a year is.....

Where from... the horses mouth..... "I think you are suggesting your £200 a day also includes expenses - saws, fuel for saws, travel (after your commute - we all have to commute), safety kit, climbing kit and so on - which your accountant should be able to do before tax." (me) "You’re pretty much bang on the money. Not to mention kit needs updated/ replaced." "Check all the keyboard warriors. Don’t worry guys over £100,000 worth of kit will be on eBay" all that £100k worth of kit.... needs updating and replacing on the £200 a day you are getting.. else that £200 a day is for you and a saw. I can't work out how a saw costs £350 week in expenses to put your wages below the UK average. Doesn't add up.

I'm not convinced with the 100k worth of kit and working as a £200 a day subby. Something didn't add up about 6 pages ago, might be wrong. Brand new Transit ~£35k Brand new chipper ~£20k Brand new Trailer ~£5k Brand new splitter ~£7k 4 Brand new saws ~£4k Full set PPE, brand new ~£1k (lets go pretty good) Full climbing kit, ropes and so on, brand new ~£2k (a pure guess here) Bits and pieces, a few £k Say £80k for brand new kit, all bought in the last couple of months, no depreciation. As above, there are some local firms in Edinburgh loving you that you can turn up with all of this at £200 a day, less than it costs to rent some of the kit and much much less than man + kit

I don't think the issue then is being underpaid. A freelance 'man' with a saw & PPE should probably command those rates, a bit less maybe, add in skills such as climbing, team leading and so on and you can add something to that bottom line. This is the same as in any business - shelf stacker in Tescos earns less than Team Leader Shelf Stacker. As such the pay rate is fair, and if all you are selling is being a 'man with saw' then you are getting the right rate. If you are turning up with a tipper transit, a chipper, 3 or 4 saws, climbing kit, then you need to add that into the rate you charge. If you take 100k worth of kit to site (with, what, a 5 year replacement cycle?) you need to be adding £400 a week to your rates if you use it all. No wonder you are in demand, the employers are getting a lot of kit on site for free. So the issue isn't rates, it is business management. Same with any business. A good example might be driving, you shouldn't charge about 19p a mile (I think that is petrol costs), but whatever HMRC say, about 60p a mile. Pure business management needed, not different rates.

I think attitude is coming to CBAd, if I was looking for work, 2 pages of advice, I would be all over this thread

They obviously know where they are and that they are causing problems, so in a way, they don't have many choices if they want to protect the shipping lanes. However the timing is at the discretion of the politicians, could have been last year, could have been next year, but.....

A UK-US joint operation, there are 2 elections coming up remember.

He reckons about 18k a year in expenses for local work

Going back a few years, think it was Pentium Pro's at the time, can't remember, anyways I set up an old 386 with DOS and a web browser - for casual surfing it was just as quick. (Maybe I should explain, 386 was an intel PC chip from about 30 years ago, DOS is the operating system that Windows is built on, and a lot more powerful if you could use it, not so pretty though, ahh, happy days.) Still going back to the old days, dial up modems were 56k (500 times slower than broadband), because that is the speed that someone can type at, if you don't want anything more fancy than a few e-mails then any speed is good.

the UK average wage in December was about £660 a week, 2/3 of your take home, however I think you are suggesting your £200 a day also includes expenses - saws, fuel for saws, travel (after your commute - we all have to commute), safety kit, climbing kit and so on - which your accountant should be able to do before tax. Are my sums right here that your £1k a week gives you £350+ a week in expenses and a below average UK wage? I'm not directly in the business (the company does do some tree stuff), so perhaps a bit naive to the expenses, so how do they build up so much?

Edinburgh is over run with tree surgeons... (and he was quoting £1250+ a day... 5x £200 + £250 for the groundy, and in a saturated market too)

I've never done anything else apart from keep dried wood in the garage. We have roller shutter door and a side door, I would be bettering that more moisture comes in the garage that way than from the logs. Never noticed any mold in there, but occasionally get some damp - but attribute this more to the doors. Kiln dried / Air dried / Seasoned... doesn't mean a lot in my view, 'dried' means not as wet as it was. So unless they are specifying a maximum moisture content you could be getting anything. Kiln dried helps them sell more and more quickly, only need a yard to store 1 years worth of logs rather than 3 years, don't need to handle it as much, is a nice easy sales technique. No one is offering 'air dried' logs as if they were special you see - even though just as good, always 'kiln dried' Anyway. you should be fine keeping them in the garage, if you are worried just open the garage doors every now and then in the summer to blow some air through

So back to the original thing, if they have blocked or lost your e-mail account am not sure there is much you can do. I've always gone for e-mails that are not linked to my service provider - just a paranoia what happens when I switch or move. Might be something to do in the future, I use hotmail / outlook, which apparently dates me, GMail used to be the thing but suspect that has been superseded now and only for old people (in computer terms, 30 year olds+). If there was a computer genius reading this, they could set you up with a webpage, and e-mail address for a few ££ a year - complete control then (John87.co.uk ? ), but I'd probably stick to the free webmails. After than what do you do online really? Watch a few videos is the most intense we go, and they are all OK, don't need to go any faster than we have (I think we get normal broadband, might be superfast now), and how much do you do online? Some phone sim deals work well if you have decent reception and not watching hundreds of TV shows month

£500 - £700 a week in expenses sounds a lot for local work, no accommodation to pay for.

Likewise, but for others who might follow looking for employment a lot of the above advice is good stuff.

We did a project years ago sending internet up a valley via radio - worked really well and at the time was about the fastest internet there was (was before fibre broadband, not sure how it compares now). Think the radio link was about 10 miles all in.

If it was professionally swept in the summer then I wouldn't worry about that a few months later. There is anecdotal evidence, stories or whatever of stoves and chimneys working perfectly well without being swept for a few years. Maybe not best practice however. Yes, I have a set of brushes and will do the chimney, sometimes twice a year (Easter - at end of winter and September in case we had small fires over the summer (small fire: sets up air flow in the house, freshens it all up a bit). I'd still be looking at the basic installation, chimney perhaps. Perhaps also make a diary of how bad it is each day with a note on the outside weather - wind direction - and temperatures (very cold, cold, warm maybe) see if there is a pattern when it is worse or better

Definitely the problem is always going to be the air filter location for knackering the engine and exposed electrics like alternator for conking out

Not my line of work directly but other plans I work on you can go from very low tech to as techy as you want. Very low tech, buy a large scale paper print from Ordnance Survey (about £20 sent as a PDF), get out the Sharpies and scribble, scan and send back, to full tech with a professional drawing or CAD package and a GPS coordinate for every tree, wall, ditch, and whatever else you want. I use emapsite for electronic plans, however each is only licensed to use for 1 year (however for records, like a PDF in the archives that is OK), cost to our company is about £20 for a vector map which should do you, plus you'd then need to update that. Might be if it is a one off job you go the Sharpies route, scribble on paper and pass that to a CAD software house to make up something posh. Can also get large scale plans from emapsite too, Can go google earth and make notes on that I think for free. Doing the site maps is easy, getting good software that is affordable is another story.

At 16 it is going to be a little trickier to break into the industry without transport... but hopefully potential employers can see past no bike and too young to drive (not all 16 year olds have cash for lessons, a bike, insurance, fuel). What about public transport, where are you able to get to in a morning? (without giving away too much personal information). You might be able to reply here saying "no transport but I can get to these places for a morning pick up and drop off if that is convenient". Sometimes it will work out well that whoever is driving that day will be passing your house and get you from there, other days you might need an early start and the first bus to get 10 miles away for a lift - start doing some good selling of yourself here, someone might be watching this as a part of in interview process and your willingness to put yourself forward