Advice to new woodland owners

[treebloke]

Make sure you have insurance.

[RichardKing]

I would seriously question wether you should be digging toilets in woodland.

Often the soils are naturally quite poor & low in nutrients. Poo deposited by animals falls onto the surface of the ground where it is rapidly degraded by bacteria. Most bacterial action occurs in the top few inches of soil.

It might be better to leave it on the surface & cover with leaves & brash rather than in a pit where it will decay slowly and possibly contaminate groundwater.

[Darren]

Surely having a open toilet will work the same. Ours seems to rot down quick. As with a compost bin it's best not to chose a wet site..

[pete]

DuncanB says " make a huge zip-wire" but aren't they rather expensive (the cable and pulleys, I mean)? I've always wanted to do one but the braided wire costs a fortune, and then it needs to be maintained, yes?

[steve rollnick]

Docsquid,

I'd say first of all decide how many lives you think you might have. if its only one, then go for your dreams right now, and be gentle with your wood at the same time.

The toilet we put up straight away (4 ft above ground, with a view to die for), the water butt, the large iron fire bowl, a watering can for showers, & mice proof boxes were invaluable. Then we got exercise - sawing and storing fire wood, and I am sorry we never did more of that.

Most other decisions were taken only after sitting quietly for a while, and we regret none of them. The zip wire was not too expensive, but the angle was tricky to get right (a tree surgeon friend did it for us); we paid a woodland friend to mill some larch and made an eccentric shelter using heavy duty tarpaulin for waterproofing and then put a wood-fired stove in it.

Now we are bringing light into selected parts, digging a pond, and enjoying the easy pack-up-and-go feeling for independent camping for days on end.

if I lived twice I would do nothing for a few years, and watch how the wood changes.

Steve

[DuncanB]

Pete, my zip-wire wasn't prohibitively expensive - less than £150 for all of the bits.

I looked at some of the kits on fleabay - most of these were designed (badly) for small children only, and had maximum rated weights of 35kg or so. And as bigger kids (some in their 60's) were bound to have a go, they are totally unsafe!

I designed mine to take grossly overweight adults (I wanted to play too!), so everything was rated to at least 2 tonnes (remembering that you will be stressing a taught horizontal wire by much more than your weight in use).

I used 50m of galvanised steel cable with the correct bits to put loops in the ends, lifting strops looped around the tree to anchor the cable (via a shackle) - which eliminated any damage to the trees, a ratchet to tension the wire, bungee cord to act as a brake and a Petzl (climbing) pulley to ride on. As nothing is attached, nailed or otherwise, this can be put up or taken down in an hour or so (including tea breaks) and stored over the winter.

Rather than having people dangling (they could fall off!), I used a harness - strapping them in at the bottom and then pulling (or letting 8-year olds pull) the victim, sorry passenger to the top on a short piece of string. This also meant that I didn't have to build a platform! Really good fun and Safe - can't recommend enough!

[Catweazle]

Zipwire is a great idea. I have some long lengths of lift cable, half inch steel, must get something rigged up this Summer.