Tree Removal and Milling Services
Clearsafe Knotweed are proud and truly excited to announce our mobile tree milling service. This is something that we have been conducting as a hobby and passion for years now. Our service may even be FREE depending on what you want from the project, see how much does it cost?
If you’ve lost a tree to a storm, disease or had to remove it because of development needs, why don’t you have it milled into usable planks or beams so you can continue to enjoy it for years to come? These planks have a premium value; for a small time commitment, we can show you how to store your ‘green’ timber to make sure it becomes premium grade usable timber, we can even set this up for you.
There’s an environmental benefit to this too, rotting trees release carbon and methane into the atmosphere; these are the two most significant greenhouse gases. By using the timber, you are locking up or ‘sequestering’ this carbon. These trees are things of beauty that have grown for years and years, it just doesn’t do them justice to be burned or left to rot!
Most tree surgeons will charge heavily to cut up and remove fallen trees before selling it on as firewood. We believe this wood just has too much potential to burn or allow to rot! If it’s easy and low-risk, we will occasionally fell the tree for you but we won’t fell a tree that isn’t diseased, dying or being removed anyway for a legitimate reason such as development. Sorry, but we don’t believe it’s the right thing to do!
We like to give back to the environment and will always try to leave a proportion of the timber onsite if at all possible, creating log-piles or similar habitats to sustain the food chain that also benefits the next generation of trees and animals.
Our Milling Journey
As hobbyist woodworkers we were always concerned about the sustainability of our wood-sources. We have seen that, despite the best efforts of a coalition of campaigners, celebrities, politicians and just ordinary people, deforestation rates in the amazon and other important forests have been too high and are now on the rise again. The financial crisis and political changes have pushed sustainability issues such as global warming near the bottom of the priority list in many countries, including the UK.
Although there are some really good ‘chain of custody’ schemes out there, such as the FSC and PEFC that aim to reassure buyers that the wood has come from well-managed forests, even the most responsible large-scale timber operations and markets have really significant impacts on the natural and human environments. We were also dismayed that there were some scandals where greed had led companies to cheat on these schemes. The supply and demand issue was also driving timber to insanely high prices.
Looking around us, we could see that the UK climate produces slow growing timber of much greater character and quality than much of the fast growing inferior hardwoods that are imported from Europe and further afield. As hands-on, outdoors types, we decided to have a go at doing it ourselves. After several failed attempts, some training, a lot of wasted money and much blood, sweat and tears (literally), we’ve created our processes that are efficient and safe.
What We Do?
We come to your site with our mobile mill, separate the limbs that are usable and then process them into whatever timber you require.
We can arrange for others to attend site at the same time to process the rest of the tree into chippings etc.
How much does it cost?
The price will depend on two main factors, time and distance. We charge a daily rate for our use of equipment onsite and our transport costs to get to you.
As wood-workers ourselves, we will always look at timber sharing deals where you can reduce the cost by sharing some of the wood with us. We’ve even not charged on occasions where the customer has wanted to save money on the tree surgeon but not wanted the wood (or just a small amount as a keepsake!). We’re really interested in hard and exotic woods such as Walnut, Oak, Maple, Ash, Laburnum, Cherry, Monkey Puzzle, Yew and Eucalyptus.
If you want to have your timber made into something beautiful or buy a unique piece made from sustainable British wood, check out Stormfallen Bespoke Furniture.
