Dan Maynard

Is it worth cost vs simple removal?

Not sure if this is 3rd school of thought or just a subset of 2... 2(b). Could be ok - but in the chance that it does fail and land on someone (city street near school is high footfall), and owner has ignored the huge tree defect, then maybe held negligent. Failure reasonably foreseeable. None of us have even seen the top of the tree, but given the location if pushed to give an internet answer I'd suggest either fell it, or pollard to a height that makes falling over very unlikely. It's a sycamore so bashing the top off isn't going to hold it back, even if you take it down to ground level you'll have a multi stem sycamore tree in a few years time. You could suggest it's on the boundary and difficult to prove ownership and maybe the neighbour would go halves, but a couple of solicitors letters and you'd have been better off just getting the work done. Not a difficult tree to do, park chipper right by it.

I'd say you are right to be concerned, difficult to really assess anything like that from photos but it looks like removal of structural roots, yes potentially compromised safety. As to liability or who should pay for any remedial work, minefield. Legal action is much more expensive than tree work in general.

I did read an article about how maybe AI won't grow and take over the world, because the internet is now full of so much inaccurate AI generated crap its hard to train it without it believing its own bullsh1t.

It's not just social media, just got this in the back of a Section 211 acknowledgement letter. "3. Nesting birds are protected by the Wildlife and Countryside ..( it goes on ) ... . Normally it is good practice to avoid tree work during the period 1 st March to 31st August in any year, although birds can nest either side of this period. " It then goes on to suggest ecological consultants can be found in the yellow pages. Holy moly, everyone doing tree work in the summer needs to hire an ecologist?

A charged battery is a charged battery, so yes in a way the old fashioned charger does do the same job, except that you can't leave it on the battery once charged. For me the real issue smart charger solves is battery self discharge while not used - I have a small one which I leave on my Spitfire all the time, this keeps the battery in good condition for years - before I had that I'd only get one or two years out of a battery as they don't like being let go flat while you're not using them. In that way the £40 charger has paid for itself many times over.

Have they been reading the Daily Mail too? We don't stop tree work over the summer.

Aviva are good for me on the Landy, as above it's a lottery based on some algorithms that noone watches. Unless you've had 17 crashes in the last year of course?

Yes, me. Ironically my chipper is yellow so the orange not an upgrade, but you can't have everything.

I did some work through it when it was newer, and I was less established. Since then the cost has gone up a lot, and number of other people bidding gone up. You need to be quick and cheap to get anything - people using it are just looking for something cheap, trade reputation means nothing else they'd be asking everyone they know if they've had tree work done. I don't use it at all any more - suggest to avoid.

Found a mountain bike tyre 30 feet up an ash.

It's funny isn't it, my apple tree gets a whack every few years because it's got too big. Always someone else's tree to do first.....

We try to do 8.30 to 3.30 on site, if it takes a bit longer we'll stay on. That can be an hour from home though. My opinion 1630 starts golden hour for accidents, either being tired or rushing to get done, so mindful of that and try to avoid doing anything dramatic. There's always another day.

To me it's either cut it in half, or down completely. It's walnut, most likely sprout from the cuts either way. The root damage is a bit of a ticking bomb really.

I bought a secondhand saw which started ok but wouldn't run properly, owner had obviously never found the air filter to clean it so it was absolutely gunged up. Could be anything that's the trouble, you have to be happy to rebuild it completely after paying what you paid.

... spent most of my money on fast cars, smoking and drinking. The rest I just wasted.

I may be completely wrong here but I thought those were basically asset management tags, they monitor run time for HAVS compliance and servicing schedules - rather than linking in to the engine control and telling you diagnostic info.

It does look good. Midline is nice but not something I'm doing all the time in the tree, whereas DRT/SRT switching I do all the time. That has a much nicer DRT arrangement than RRP.

The are below or in line with the raker when the chains travelling straight, but stick out when it's going round the bar nose. Idea is to reduce chance of kickback, problem is you need the bottom half of the nose to cut for cutting with a buried bar. Or any slightly creative cut in between branches etc. If you take a Stihl 1/4 pitch chain it has bumpers but not high, these Oregon ones are just terrible.

I have thought about .325, in the 18v not seen a sprocket but you can definitely get 1/4. I'm going to try Stihls 3/8 1.1 full chisel next as the Oregon chain it comes with has such big safety bumpers you can barely cut with the bar buried so I had to file them off.

That's the stuff

My honda head bolts came a bit loose. Hadnt really started leaking as bad as that, but I just tightened them up and carried on. I would tighten bolts and see how it goes.

The JB weld high temp spud suggested is less than a tenner, ordinary araldite breaks down at less than 100C so probably worth getting the high temp stuff.

Sometimes variegated cultivars just revert on a particular branch up in the canopy, maybe a break or pruning site but other times seems random. I guess this is a similar mechanism.

I think the weight advantage is lost when once you put the battery in, but still it does look really tempting. If starting from scratch I'd go XGT, at the moment I've got 6 LXT batteries in rotation.