Arboricultured

You can and I quote “travel to and from work where working from home is not possible”

We can still work as far as I can make out.

I am not sure that it was insisted upon as law but by the lack of being taught to access by spurring, it was implied. Good point though, I expect it has not been specified, yet. I am happy to be put straight by someone more informed though if I am wrong.

It was about 12 years ago but when I was a college it was taught only for pole climbing. It was two ends of your rope end over end to get an anchor and then down and bottom up from there. Since leaving college progressively I have done much more spur work on the access to trees on dismantles. It’s often quicker and easier to spike up knocking off bits on the way up, as you say. Not sure about now but I can’t imagine it’s changed much.

I like that idea, it’s much neater and more compact. Is there a redundancy issue with the single karabiner? Shouldn’t be as we only have one harness, right. Be pretty hard to squeeze into two of them but I should not joke about it. You don’t know if the HSE are reading, it might give them ideas!

The thing is, the ones who aren’t compliant now and don’t have any intention of ever giving it a seconds thought and frankly don’t care are still and always will be out there. So you either Wild West it with the cowboys or try and heap ever more compliance onto your already full plate and sell it as a professional service. But realistically 20% for VAT, what, 5% for office based compliance and now how much for twin working, how much will the average customer swallow? Unless the industry is properly “policed” and people can’t do a two week course and set up as a “tree surgery company” for little more than their day rate it will push small companies into a position of not being able to be competitive and remain compliant. In the last 10 years, I have seen rates go backwards for some jobs let alone even increase with inflation while operating costs still increase! I think the guys that have left the country have been ahead of the curve to be honest. Rant over.

Also how can this way of working be insisted on when training providers are not offering it as training yet, considering how much onus is always on proof of competence? And secondly now I think about it how come so many people come out of collage not being able to climb on one line let alone two?

Seeing this as well as another thread about insurance companies now insisting on the full gambit of paperwork one would expect to provide on a commercial contract even on small domestic jobs at Mrs Miggin’s place is depressing. For the small buissness trying to deliver a professional and quality service it looks like it is pretty much over. Either that or it’s just a case of not bothering with insurance anymore because it’s not likely to be valid anyway and give up on the quality and crack on butchering the trees and grabbing the money because that is going to continue to happen anyway and there is no way anyone is going to be able to do it by the book and remain competitive.

The third section was to keep it from falling down the rope. I guess a small Prusik could be used instead. Yes, just used the two VT’s, each is only sharing 50% of the load so they run ok. It’s not the smoothest though.

Thank you for that Eddie. I have had a look on YouTube and found an interview with him from climbing arborist I am going to have a look at. [emoji106]

Yeah, you can tie it in double after accessing singly with a wrench but it’s a faf. I have found myself reaching back for the old HTP and wrench to be honest. Do you isolate your tip after accessing with a base? I do almost every time now after having a little accident in a pollard with my base tied line. I cut right through it sneakily hiding in an awkward knuckle... thankfully I was side stropped in. The one thing I do like about the double line is instead of having one foot ascender and a hass you can have two foot ascenders it’s kinder to my knees as it seems to even out the loading. Maybe that just a me thing though. I think I will use it more on big trees but for day to day I have gone back to the tried and tested.

Lol, I have been climbing 12 years and 6 of those on SRT chap. It’s 10.5 mil Teufelberger Platinum arborACCESS static rope, although not as static as HTP unfortunately.

I did post something in the SRT thread but got little response as I guess it should have been here but I do think there is scope for a system to be developed that is used in a similar way to a single line but has redundancy. Especially if brains better than mine were thinking about it and if some sort of mechanical device or devices were thought about being used. It needn’t be onerous or clunky if properly thought through. It could even bring some benefits.

How come?