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The great Saga of Dumb and Dumber cutting a tree.


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9 minutes ago, Onoff said:

Easy fix...ever heard the term "cordwood"? Its a wall made from logs on edge. You could even wedge that cold one in and save a trip to the bottle bank!

 

 

A cord is 128ft³ of wood: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cord_(unit)

 

I'm pretty sure it may have originated around the time that wood fired steam transport (railroads and steamers) were cutting down millions of trees for fuel along their routes.  There was a US TV programme on back in the 1960s about a river boat (I think it was on the Mississippi) , and they seemed to always be stopping to pick up cords of wood for fuel.

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On 17/07/2019 at 06:45, Russell griffiths said:

Would happily have done it for you for a bit of exchange labour.

 

Hand dredging your lake maybe or "man in the water" when you lay the GSHP loop?

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2 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

All this talk of people being safe makes me sick.

At least branch could have caught one of you in the nads, just as a social comment :D

Health and Safety - yeah right, Pfffff.

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37 minutes ago, Patrick said:

Health and Safety - yeah right, Pfffff.

 

The H&S fanatics would have had kittens a short time ago, watching me up a ladder, manhandling a 23kg air con outdoor unit on to a set of brackets under the eaves...

 

The bastard is up there now, though, and I'm never getting it down.

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2 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

 

The H&S fanatics would have had kittens a short time ago, watching me up a ladder, manhandling a 23kg air con outdoor unit on to a set of brackets under the eaves...

 

The bastard is up there now, though, and I'm never getting it down. 

????

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3 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

 

The H&S fanatics would have had kittens a short time ago, watching me up a ladder, manhandling a 23kg air con outdoor unit on to a set of brackets under the eaves...

 

The bastard is up there now, though, and I'm never getting it down.

 

I did nearly comment on whether you were safe working on your own, but I would have done just the same ?

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21 hours ago, JSHarris said:

 

A cord is 128ft³ of wood: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cord_(unit)

 

I'm pretty sure it may have originated around the time that wood fired steam transport (railroads and steamers) were cutting down millions of trees for fuel along their routes.  There was a US TV programme on back in the 1960s about a river boat (I think it was on the Mississippi) , and they seemed to always be stopping to pick up cords of wood for fuel.

If I have a cord of wood ready at the end of each summer I have a gas bill of about £6 a month all winter!

 

 

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2 hours ago, JSHarris said:

 

The H&S fanatics would have had kittens a short time ago, watching me up a ladder, manhandling a 23kg air con outdoor unit on to a set of brackets under the eaves...

 

The bastard is up there now, though, and I'm never getting it down.

 

Hope you’ve got a nice installation video of that bit .... 

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4 minutes ago, PeterW said:

 

Hope you’ve got a nice installation video of that bit .... 

 

Sadly not, and if I had it'd have been a long one, given that it took me several goes to get the thing up there.  It's fixed now, just needs plumbing, wiring and testing.

 

869914843_Airconoutdoor.thumb.JPG.3fd410dcf5c3dd96f3e9dc43bb163875.JPG

 

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3 hours ago, Ferdinand said:

Is that wall listed?

 

Sorry .. was that wall listed, before it demolished itself ? ?

The wall fortunatley isn t listed. It belongs to the council and as far as I'm aware, it has been like that since these last terrible storms a few weeks ago .

But as a good citizen i am willing to put it back together myself without making a big fuss about it

?

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Just watched the time lapse and vids. With hindsight eh???

 

That was going the way it went all day long. It was slanted and weighted that way. The wedge the opposite side just helped it. The rope did jack, presume it snapped?

 

Lesson learnt etc. Glad now that Amazon cancelled my order for a bargain chainsaw recently! ?

 

 

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7 hours ago, Onoff said:

The rope did jack, presume it snapped?

 

Lesson learnt  ?

 

Luckily the distance where it fell was about a few meters less than where it was standing, so we didn't have that one whipping through the air.

But yes, in the time-lapse it is quite easy to see where it s going fairly early.

 

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9 hours ago, Onoff said:

Just watched the time lapse and vids. With hindsight eh???

 

That was going the way it went all day long. It was slanted and weighted that way. The wedge the opposite side just helped it. The rope did jack, presume it snapped?

 

Lesson learnt etc. Glad now that Amazon cancelled my order for a bargain chainsaw recently! ?

 

 

 

The rope issue is, I think, that it only works in tension, and cannot apply any force once even slightly slack. And a non-elastic rope is unable to apply any force as soon as the tree moves even half an inch in that direction - other than to prevent it falling the other way if it moves back.

 

Think about towing a car with a non-dampened rope downhill.

 

There was a old 'background' joke in the Beano, where a guy is pulling a sausage along the pavement on a lead.

 

"Why is he pulling a sausage on a lead?"

"Because he can't push it, silly !"

 

You need a special sort of powered or spring loaded pulley that takes up the slack continuously. Or a suitable dampened elastic rope.

 

F

 

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I once cut a tree down that fell the wrong way, roped and loads of tension, the tree was on the edge of a wood and I did not realise all the branches and greenery were on the outside, guess which side weighed more? Rope snapped and the tree landed on my car, horsebox, etc. Luckily there was so much soft greenery it did virtually no damage, lucky eh!.

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@joe90
I'm glad this happened to others.since releasing my story, I had loads of people coming up with their tree cutting mistake stories, so seems to be more widely spread. Which makes me feel a tiny bit less stupid (only tiny) ?

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