Our task here was the removal of deadwood from roadside trees at Netheravon. In addition, we had to fell a dead ash tree using our MEWP (Mobile Elevated Work Platform).
Rake and burn tidy up
Our project here was a rake and burn tidy up of forestry harvesting debris in Erlestoke to allow replanting of native trees next winter.
Erlestoke is a village in Wiltshire, on the northern edge of Salisbury Plain. It lies about 6 miles east of Westbury and the same distance southwest of Devizes.
Range refurbishment at Bulford (2)
Range refurbishment at Bulford contd.
Following on from our post on 12th March, here’s a few more pictures of our range works at Bulford, just northeast of Amesbury.
The project was to remove contaminated sand and replace with new sand, free of lead and heavy metals. The range is now open and in use.
Homeowner ordered to pay £21,000 proceeds of crime order for butchering a tree
This link goes to The Times of 23rd March and concerns a homeowner in Canford Cliffs, Poole, who ignored a TPO (tree preservation order) on his 42-foot oak tree and instead he virtually destroyed it by chopping off 12ft-long branches – all for the purpose of allowing sunlight to the back of his property and on to his new ‘Juliet’ balcony.
So apart from ignoring the TPO and facing the consequences with the council of that; apart from what must have been an extremely dangerous operation to take down 12-foot limbs, the homeowner has been fined:
- In what officials claim is the first case of its kind, a court has ordered the homeowner to reimburse the taxpayer the amount perceived to be the increase to the value of his £1M home, having cut down his tree. In this instance, the increase was found to be £21,000 and this is what he had to repay as proceeds of crime.
- In addition, had to pay £15,000 legal costs
- And the actual fine of £1,200
- So a total of £37,200
Justin showing a large beech tree near Bath who is boss
We spent a week dismantling decaying beech trees in Bath. They were leaning over a footpath and, having recently been surveyed, there was no choice but to dismantle and remove them and plant replacements. The timber will be used for firewood. We needed a team of 2 climbers, a groundsman with tractor and a 30-ton winch on the last day to fell the stems.
But, as you’ll see from the last three pictures below, the weather wasn’t always kind to us during the week!
Another day another 1000m post and rail job
Our job here was to replace an old, rotten post and rail fence which had served its time. We removed the fence and replaced it with 1000m of new, creosote-treated timber post and rail fencing. This should last another 30 years.
See our pictures below both ‘during’ and the ‘nice and straight’ at the end…
400m chain link fencing with 3-strands of barbed wire on top for Utilities company in Gillingham
Following on from our hedge removal project in the summer, we now needed to erect the perimeter fence to the site for the utilities company. The site had been upgraded and expanded to meet the demand for new housing. We erected 400m of 1.8m chain link fence with 3 strands of barbed wire on top.
The Protech creates 10-inch profiles for the concrete posts ready for the 400m of chain link fencing.
Site clearance in Westbury for next 2 weeks so needed the big toys to speed up the job!
Linden Homes are building a new development at Westbury by the station. So as to avoid disturbing nesting birds we needed to cut and chip large volumes of scrub and over-mature thorn and hedging. This was cut to a height of one metre and chipped on site.
The next phase will be to winching up and removing the trees from the lake and reducing larger oak trees, along with fitting cable bracing.
Range refurbishment at Bulford
We had recently won a contract to strip from site 450 tons of hazardous and contaminated sand used as a stop butt on a military firing range. After stopping bullets for years it was time to be replaced with new, along with some timber repairs while we were there.
All done while the ranges either side were live and active!
Dismantling a large conifer too close to the house, Lavington near Devizes
A recent tree survey showed that a large conifer growing close to a substantial property was too near for safety. We therefore dismantled it and removed all the timber to be reprocessed for biomass to feed a power station.
