Blown Away

[Michael Mcneil]

Anyone have propety damage after the storm?

[Iain Gordon]

Can I get through to the insurance co.? Can I hell......... constantly engaged. Iain

[Richard Sterry]

[snip]

You mean you keep your washing powder up a mast?? (or did you mean a rather overweight Israeli politician?)

No hang on, you must mean the spirit of the air from The Tempest, right? Sounds like the air has got a bit too much spirit at the moment!

:-) :-)

Rick

[Frank Erskine]

Three or 4 ridge tiles and a couple of fence panels.

[Richard]

What storm??? ;-)

[Owain]

"Michael Mcneil" wrote | Anyone have propety damage after the storm?

Yes.

Several tons of road and revetment wall decided to descend twenty ft into my back garden. I am going to have so much fun talking to the council ...

Owain

[the q]

raspberry plants, too

The Q in Deepest Norfolk

[Newshound]

A field shelter. Pulled up two ground anchors at the front, did a 360 degree roll taking out about 4 * 100 mm post and rail posts. Left two happy shetlands because they were able to spend the night stuffing themselves in the field.

[Mike]

Not really. But lots of firewood to gather up :-)

Sheep are well pissed off though. They shelter behind a dry stone wall but have eaten all the grass there.

[bof]

In message , Michael Mcneil writes

Just one tile off, embedded in the lawn, fortunately it missed the car unlike the last storm released tile . . . oh and spent some time clearing the garden of the distributed contents of the previously full recycle wheelie bin.

[Dave Liquorice]

Lost half a slate and another is rattling.

Gale F8 Gale and up to Severe Gale F9 (40 to 50mph sustained) with gusts to the low 60s mph. Windiest it has been for a longtime but we have had worse.

-- Cheers Dave. [e-mail] Nr Garrigill, Cumbria. 421m ASL. pam is missing e-mail

[Autolycus]

One hip tile, then, as we stood in the garden looking around for any more damage, 45ft run of outbuilding roof (one side of a pitched roof) lifted into the air and smashed itself all over the neighbour's garden.

It's going to be an interesting one to sort out with the insurers - it would be daft to repair it "as was", and the rather rickety brick outbuildings will not readily lend themselves to more sophisticated roof designs.

Meanwhile, we've moved as much stuff as possible into other sheds and the spare chicken caravan, sheeted over the rest, and bought a few sheets of coated OSB to do some temporary bodges. All we need now is a strong easterly to remove the other half of the roof...

Ho hum

[Lurch]

On Sat, 8 Jan 2005 09:08:26 +0000 (UTC), "Michael Mcneil" strung together this:

Nope. Double skin garden wall still up, as is the new Televes DAT45 that I fitted last month. The whellie bin's still where I left it and the roof is in one piece. The trees are still firmly rooted, and the sheds are still in one piece.

[JM]

I woke up to find a hawthorn tree across my driveway. Had to shift it without the benefit of heavy-duty gloves (emphasis on 'thorn' in the tree's name), as to buy some I would have had to get my car past the bloody thing...

Good thing I've got a decent saw though. Have now bought those gloves that I had been meaning to get...

[raden]

In message , Michael Mcneil writes

No

[Ian White]

Glad to hear that was the worst of it. But that reminds me to ask...

I'm about to take over about a third of an acre of what's meant to be wooded paddock, but is largely overrun at ground level by brambles. The previous owner has managed to return some of it to grass, but has really only, er, scratched the surface of the problem.

How can I finish the job, as permanently as possible?

By the time we get in there, the new spring growth will be well under way, so the first problem will be to clear the existing growth and try to knock the main roots back. Gardening books and websites talk about slicing around the roots of each plant - fine in a flower bed, but I will need quicker and more drastic methods.

Obviously it will then be a life sentence of mowing, mowing, mowing to keep the suckers down... but that's the way of it. We'll be sure to leave a small area to reward ourselves with blackberry pies.

Any specific brand recommendations about genuinely thornproof gloves, strong enough to let you grab a bramble sucker and haul on it?

[Roger]

The message from Ian White contains these words:

With care any cheap thick leather glove should do. Bramble thorns aren't quite in the same league as thorn and pullable suckers are relatively small and soft. Screwfix do 'superior riggers' gloves at £1.89 per pair and 'ultimate riggers' at £2.79. A bit pricy if you want nothing else but if the quality of the ultimate ones haven't changed they even last a good while on gritstone walling which can't be said for the cheaper ones or the skin on my ingers without them.

I use a mattock to dig out mature bramble roots (and thorn bushes, etc).

[Stefek Zaba]

I found a hired cultivator was very effective in destroying the vigour of very well-established brambles - I cut 'em down to near ground level first by (ab)using a hedge trimmer, then made a couple of passes with a Serious and heavy cultivator, getting down I'spose about 15cm. The little slices of bramble root all tried sprouting next season, but inbetween mulching and pulling up any more vigorous shoots (which had no root structure to speak of), they didn't get hold.

However, this was only a long strip for a new hedge - 50m long but little more than 1m wide. Whether the approach would scale to your paddock without requiring an infeasible amount of labour, I'm not sure. (Maybe a local farmer/contractor would do you the equivalent of the cultivator application using a suitable attachment on the back of their trusty Massey for a few beer vouchers!)

Screwfix's welding guantlets do it for me - brambles aren't seriously nasty thorns (unlike the blackthorn which makes up some 30% of the mix I planted ;-), so they're more than up to the job, and the extended wrist/lower forearm coverage is handy.

HTH - Stefek

[Huge]

[11 lines snipped]

Personally, I'd spray the lot with brush killer, 2 or 3 times, then re-establish the grass once everything's properly dead. Brambles are a PITA to kill.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Me niether as far as I can tell.

Which is unusual.

But most of the dodgy trees fell over years ago or were cut down last year.

Out here is was not the worst I have seen by a long chalk.

Another one due in a day or two allegedly.