Will visitors to Madeira worry about having branches or trees in public places fall on them?
When a visitor reviews the current public tree maintenance in Madeira material below, do they require life insurance with a funeral plan before their visit?
The following 12 sections provide more detail; with section 12 providing a cheap start to improving the life for the roots:-
- 1. This tree trunk in Madeira will fall because of the heartwood being rotted away.
- 2. Electrical cabling tied to trees in Madeira is killing the tree.
- 3. Constriction of trees by metal, tarmac, stone, concrete etc will cause the tree to grow over the constriction. At some point that tree will break at this fulcrum and fall over; due to the weight above that fulcrum being in excess of what the heartwood at that fulcrum can support.
- 4. Growing trees within 2 metres of a vertical drop in the soil and thus automatically restricting it's circle of roots means that the tree will have complete lack of support from a large section of root and is vulnerable to falling down from wind. Also the Eucalyptus roots extract a lot of water from the soil causing that soil to lose its cohesion and fall away.
- 5. The weight of a growing unbraced shrub/tree in a small volume of soil, surrounded by impervious material, is going to exceed the weight of that soil. That means that that plant will fall down at the fulcrum of that trunk with the ground.
- 6. Constriction of trees by plastic twine, baling twine, metal wire will cause the same problem as in Sections 2 and 3.
- 7. Photograhic evidence of damage to 166 trees in Funchal, Madeira with explanations and possible solutions.
- 8. In Medway, England the council has sprayed herbicide round the base of trees in public spaces to kill off the grass. The grass dehydrates the roots of the tree below.
- 9. This explains why grass is detrimental to other plants growing in it.
- 10. The cultural needs of plants for water, gas exchange and nutrients is explained. If these are not met then that plant will die.
- 11. Earthworms provide the transport system in the soil for the rainwater, gas exchange and nutrients dissolved in that water to reach the tree roots via tunnels. No access for earthworms, no earthworms, cultural needs of plants not met.
- 12. Although some solutions have been given in the previous sections, this provides a start for improving the cultivation conditions for the roots of those plants in Madeira and in other countries.
1. Could Madeira use this tree in its current state as Cheap Staff Accomodation for
- staff at the Forum Shopping Centre
- or
- for me as accomodation, while I sort out their tree problems
(at least when I would fall asleep, it would be sitting up as required below? Madeirans care for their staff in knowing that I would not have far to travel to go to work)?
Photo 10 - tree 101 from pestana promenade to forum tree hollow trunk IMG_6063.JPG in
Damage to Tree Roots in Madeira caused by People Page in Section 7.
The hole in the trunk could be sold by the Tourist Office or rented out, who would install a thin front door (you would need to go inside your bijou residence sideways) with a toilet behind it ( you could also sleep on this toilet saving hotel bed costs), a small sink to the side and hanging space for one's clothes for a very reasonable selling or renting price. A camping stove could be set up outside to cook your meals - or you could eat in the establishments within a 150 metres in the Forum Shopping Centre; and then you could use a small fold-up stool for seating outside. Rubbish could be installed in a bag behind you, which could be lent against as a cushion/pillow at nightime.
Household insurance to cover the flat from being blown down could be expensive. You would need to scrub off the charcoal from the burnt inside of the trunk, before you could paint it magnolia. You might not be able to extend the living space within the trunk without structural collapse.
Try not to be on the zebra crossing when it does fall if there is no repair.
2. The following 2 photos illustrate how easy it is for an electrician to kill a tree by tying a metal/plastic tie so tight that it cuts through the Outer Bark, the Inner Bark or Phloem and the Cambium layers depriving the trunk above and kills it, without him/her knowing that is what will happen. Combine that with no maintenance of these trees in pavements and so the population and the paying visitors prepare to endure the failure of branches/trunks of these trees and hope that they are not underneath or that those trees will not interfere with gas tanks which are below them:
note the splits in the exposed heartwood, where the heartwood is starting to fail.
Below is a diagram showing how thin are the 3 top layers of a tree/shrub which provide protection and power to live for that tree and how easy it is to be damaged without the tree being able to repair that damage:-
3. The following photo comes from Madeira Island News.com with the accompanying text dated 30 July 2018:-
"A set of iron foundations placed around some trees of regional road 104, in the stretch between the PSP and the Ponte Vermelha, in Ribeira Brava, are conditioning the growth of the trees and generating controversy.
According to one reader to JM, the fact is that the same bases, which are completely rusty as the image demonstrates, are clearly affecting the growth of the species in question, which in their opinion may lead to the destruction of the species.
In addition, it indicates that many of these bases are even reaching the interior of the trees and there are cases of some species that are already higher in relation to the pavement.
Several popular have already expressed concern about what happened. They understand that the solution is to remove the iron bases."
If these iron bases are reaching the interior of the trees, that means that as that tree grows it will at some point be too heavy to be supported by the trunk at the base level and it will fall down - WHY DOES NOBOBDY IN MADEIRA GET EDUCATED ABOUT HOW TREES GROW AND SHOULD BE MAINTAINED, OR DO THEY PREFER TO HAVE ANOTHER 13 PEOPLE KILLED BY FALLING TREES AS HAPPENED IN 2017? AND WILL THEY MAKE THE SAME MISTAKE WHEN PLANTING 288,000 TREES AND SHRUBS IN THE ECOLOGICAL PARK? Since nobody in Portugal or Madeira is reading this during April 2019, perhaps somebody might tell them or will you also be wasting your time?
4. Another report from Madeira about trees:-
PPM WARNS TREES AT RISK OF FALLING ON THE ROAD BETWEEN CANHAS AND PAUL DA SERRA
TOBI HUGHES 22ND FEBRUARY 2019
The PPM Madeira was today on the road connecting the parish of the Canhas to Paul da Serra, according to the request of the people who contacted the party, to see the danger of some large trees that are in danger of falling.
“What we saw there is very worrying,” says Paulo Brito, who photographed some of the trees with their roots in sight without the necessary support to stand. In his opinion, “a stronger wind is enough that they come down”, others that have been severely burned by the last fires and are dead, “just waiting to fall”.
We saw large branches and trees already with a level of inclination for the road, almost at a stage of a possible tragedy.
The road also needs a lot of attention as it is in a very bad state and is a road used by locals and many tourists, as one of the main routes to Paul da Serra.
Taken from Funchal News.
This tree does not have any root support for over 50% of its circular root area. There are at least 3 trees in this photo that are within 1 metre of the cliff face to the road. I wonder if these trees are Eucalyptus (one of the reasons for the introduction of Eucalytus to the Island was for the production of paper) which has one of the highest demands for water and therefore if grown on a slope with many others, the ground underneath this tree may have reached the Permanent Wilting Point. Then, the soil between the tree roots falls off the side of a cliff as shown here; and the ground becomes too dry to support the other trees in this wood. In this photo there are at least 2 trees which are no longer vertical and if the ground moisture below them has reached beyond the Permanent Wilting Point for those trees, then they likely to continue the descent to ground.
Surface soil moisture is the water that is in the upper 10 cm (4 inches) of soil, whereas root zone soil moisture is the water that is available to plants, which is generally considered to be in the upper 200 cm (80 inches) of soil:-
- Wet Soil has Saturated water content of 20-50% water/soil and is Fully saturated soil
- Moist Soil has Field capacity of 10-35% water/soil and is Soil moisture 2–3 days after a rain or irrigation
- Dry Soil has Permanent Wilting Point of 1-25% water/soil and is Minimum soil moisture at which a plant wilts
- Residual water content of 0.1-10% water/soil and is Remaining water at high tension
- Available Water Capacity for plants is the difference between water content at field capacity and permanent wilting point
5. If you put a shrub/tree in a very small volume of ground and allow it to grow, there will come a point where the weight of the tree/shrub above ground exceeds the weight of the earth/roots below the ground and so it becomes unstable and falls over as you can see in an evening for falling trees in October 2017 article. The earth in the hole where the shrub is surrounded by impervious material is not enough area or depth for its roots to continue to provide itself with a stable platform as it matures.
6. "This tree was tied with plastic baling twine to a fence when very young. The white section shows the width at which it was tied. This tree top snapped in the wind.
Please never use plastic twine or wire to tie a plant.
Please also do not use tarred cord as it will last too long and cause the same problem as above, use garden twine which will rot within a few years and then allows the plant' stem to expand. For trees or shrubs remember that the stake is only a support for the first 3 years at most, in order to stop the plant from being uprooted and to allow the stem above the 18 inches (45 cms) where it is tied to being able to sway in the breeze and strengthen rather than being tied at 60 inches (150 cms) and then when the support is removed the tree trunk is not strong enough and breaks in a strong wind. If you going to support climbers then also use garden twine, since when you cut it to move or remove that branch every 2 or 3 years, it can then lie on the ground and be recycled by your friendly earth organisms!" from Growing Edibles in Containers in Plants Extra.
If the tree is constricted by a metal ring as shown above; then it will grow over that ring and when the weight of growth above is too much for the area of heartwood within that metal ring, it will also snap off at that point.
7. 166 trees in the pavements in a short section of a road in Funchal, Madeira are being slowly, starved, dehydrated, asphyxiated, poisoned by tarmac and concrete, burnt inside their hollow trunks, roots pounded by 40 ton lorries or shoes of pedestrians, and allowed to rot until killed off during February 2019 (see information in Problems with trees in pavements in Funchal, Madeira in January/February 2018 Page, which appears to have had no effect) as shown by my 433 photos in the following pages:-
- Death of tree roots and
- Death of tree trunks/branches caused by people.
- Solution to problems for trees caused by people using irrigation -
Growth of Pollarded Tree in Hotel Garden in 1 year provides a water solution to this destruction.
- Damage to Tree Trunks 1, 2, 3, 4 caused by people,
- Damage to Tree Roots caused by people,
- Area of Open Ground round trees,
- New Trees in pavements 1, 2,
- Irrigation of current trees,
- Watersprouts on trees,
- Crossing Branches in trees,
- Utility Equipment with tree Foliage,
- Lights on trees,
- Bycycle Lane in Pavement,
- Public Gardens alongside pavements,
- Hotel/Private Gardens alongside pavements,
- Current Permeable Pavement Surface round trees and
- Irrigation and Fertilising of trees.
The people of Madeira and/or VAN DEN BERK NURSERIES could SOLVE THESE TREE PROBLEMS
or
they could continue to kill these trees and others in the same situation elsewhere on the island
and then continue to be killed by those trees falling on them or on a 1000 gallon cooking gas tank for each of 2 hotels, causing leaks, followed by explosions
or
invite me to do the work unpaid, with Madeira providing food/drink, work clothes, materials and equipment for these tree problems (Madeira would donate the use of the following sleeping facility with my ankles and head above my stomach to drain my ankles and prevent drowning from phlegm created in my throat during my sleep together with 11 medications for heart failure, head tumour, diuretics, blood thinners, reduction of heart rate by 60 beats a minute, glaucoma, and 3 of those medications for diabetes, etc).
It might take me a little time
- to gather over 50 tons of seaweed/ cow manure and mix it before delivering it 3 times a year to each tree and pavement flower bed in this section within Funchal; more would be needed to cover the others in the island,
- removal of pavers and white/black marble pavements and replace with reduced size pavers with 2 inch depth of sharp sand under them,
- deal with unsealed tree branch cuts and rotting holes,
- deal with rotting tree roots,
- deal with root/lorry problems,
- retighten tree braces,
- erect steel structures over gas tanks to prevent damage by falling trees,
- provide irrigation to the trees in those pavements on a weekly basis
- create database of all trees/flower beds in pavements in Madeira, with repair schedule and paver replacement/ irrigation/ fertiliser creation; and irrigation and fertilising time schedules.
- following my use of 6 FAIL (Fortran Assisted Instruction Lecture) written notes, so that the students from Years 1 and 2 of the Architecture Dept of Portsmouth Polytechnic would receive the next 1 hour lecture notes at the end of the previous, I taught the Fortran language, hardware, software, flowcharting and documentation to them within 6 hours followed by 2 afternoons of practical in creating stats from an experiment in the laboratory. Those students passed with 75% following my exam of a waffle, flowchart and program questions supervised by the Computer Science Dept. I graduated with a 2.2 in Psychology from Brunel University the previous year to this teaching, having spent 18 months under Section 22 from falling on my head at 60mph in Wales from a motorbike and then recovering the use of the spoken and written English language by myself. I was passed mentally fit in the January of the year that I took my finals. Due to 1/3 of my brain being detached from my skull, I am discouraged from engaging in contact sports. Following close contact between a female dentist and my teeth, which resulted in a 2 month hiatus in my blood-thining medication, I am also allergic to close contact with the female species, unless my eyes are closed until they move 2 feet (60 cms) away. I have a temperature range between 18-20 degrees Celcius, so it can be a problem where air-conditioning only brings the temperature down to 24 degrees Celcius as in cinemas, theatres and banqueting halls.
Then perhaps I could teach the following students:-
- Tree-surgeons to get trees thinned, crowned, etc to aid the purpose for which those trees were planted, not pollard the whole tree and produce a very dangerous result when used for trees in pavements, or for hanging electricity lighting schemes on them - the ties slowly cutting through the bark and the cambium killing the trunk/branch above.
- Bed maintenance staff in how to prune, which does not mean chopping a rose to ground level each year and nor does it mean using a flail to chop shrubs into rectangles or turn shrub borders into oblong hedges.
- Bed and tree maintenance staff with use of green manures, seaweed/cow-, pig-, sheep-, chicken-manure, recycled food waste from restaurants and food markets mixed with shredded shrub/tree prunings and used as a mulch to feed the plants under their care.
- hotel and restaurant staff in checking the state of their toilets to stop the leakage of thousands of gallons of water from the overflow in the cistern or the washer seals into the latrine bowl.
Having had to reveal 2 leaks in the 2 toilets in the Pestana Promenade Hotel suite in 2018 followed by a leak in 1 of the toilets in the Pestana Mirimar Hotel Suite in 2018 followed a year later in the Pestana Promenade Hotel Suite with one of the same toilets still leaking and it taking an hour for the Maintenance Manager to cure it this time, I am hopefull that next year there will not be a repeat performance.
Your toilet cisterns remind me of the self-cleaning tumble dryer that used the water removed from the drying clothes to wash the condenser into the same match-box tank with foam pressure valve which activated a pump to transfer that water into a large tank at the top. Unfortunately when the system washed the fine dust into that matchbox, it clogged the foam and activated the pump. When no more water could be pumped, it refused to allow the machine to start drying. That tank was inaccessable to the machine owner and so cost £180 a time to get emptied. Brilliant - a machine designed to fail if it carried out its function, rather like the toilets in Madeira in wasting water.
- educate the public about their relationship with plants that come into their environment to realise that without them they would be dead from lack of oxygen. In public spaces, it is advisable to be careful since many people suffer from hay-fever, so plants from All Bee-Pollinated Flowers per Month could be used, which would not affect them and those planted areas could be identified for them.
I could use Companion Planting, but I am sure that the above is enough for me to start with in taking 400 hours per day leaving my time schedule for sleep and nourishment not executed,
if
the people of Madeira do not wish to sort out these tree/shrub plant problems themselves as can be seen from the lack of response to what I wrote last year in the Problems with trees in pavements in Funchal, Madeira in January/February 2018 Page.
Although the above is about the trees in the pavements in Madeira, other towns in other countries may find the information within it useful.
8. I have noticed in my home town that herbicide has been spread
- round the trees on lawn-grass between the kerb and the tarmac pavement and
- under the hoop barriers
(hoop-barriers would probably be easier than the more effective Brett Trief Vehicle Containment Kerb system) stopping cars from parking on that verge in March 2019.
- Also, where trees are in lawn-grass on steep slopes so that their roots are exposed up the bank, that that lawn-grass has been removed - instead of herbicide being used - between those visible roots.
Perhaps Green Manure seeds will be sown in these areas.
If the Green Manure (Mustard is bee-pollinated) is bee-pollinated rather wind-pollinated, then hay-fever sufferers would not be affected when it flowers and sets seed.
Then,
- if the contractors using their ride-on mowers or rotary mowers cut into the green manure as well, it will not matter as the seed generated from that green manure will grow and replace the damaged legumes.
- These legumes under the hoop barriers and besides the trees will then feed nitrogen to the roots of those trees and
- what rain water that these legumes do not use will be available for those same tree-roots. This will help the trees
- as well as reduce the possible damage to the bark of those trees by strimmers from those same contractors and
- reduce the amount of grass mowings being put into the storm drains, when it rains after those mowings have strayed onto the tarmac road. Green manure instead of grass in and around hoop barriers within a very thin strip of grass between the road and the tarmac pavement will not require strimming as the grass it replaces does.
- if the grass next to private household fences/walls/ telegraph poles/ other items within public grassed areas or next to public buildings is also killed off with herbicides and replaced with green manure like mustard, then the strimming of that public grassed area next to those boundaries could be stopped.
The legumes like mustard between spring to autumn will replace the bare earth, which would otherwise grow weeds and look unsightly - it does not matter if some mustard grows into the grassed areas, since it would be cut down.
Use Lawn Aerating Shoes to spike the bare earth, spread the green manure seed thinly and spread using a soft brush into the holes created by the spikes. Spray the seeded ground with water to dampen the ground, before spreading a thin layer of sharp sand over the seeded area and leave the seeds to grow.
Repeat this next spring, since the first frost during the previous autumn will have killed the top growth of the mustard and the worms will then clear the ground. It becomes too cold for the weeds and just replanting in the spring with mustard will superseed any new growth of weeds.
Overall maintenance cost would thus be greatly reduced and the trees would benefit.
9. The section below explains why grass has such a detrimental effect on trees/shrubs/ or other plants planted within it:-
This shows the roots of 1 ryegrass plant, which had been removed from the foundation bed of Type I MOT Roadstone in a client's garden. You can see that this plant has tens of yards or metres of root to absorb water.
"Most turf grass roots are concentrated in the first 6-8 inches (15-20 cms) of soil. Try to irrigate only one or two inches of water per week during the turf growing season. You could irrigate the whole amount of water at one time, however most folks have better results splitting the amount into two separate applications. Please note however in sandy soils where the water percolates more rapidly it may benefit you to split the applications into three separate irrigation cycles. You do not want to irrigate more than three times a week because you would be applying so little water the outcome would be shallow roots."
"Native Grass Meadow
MARSHALL SILTY CLAY LOAM (HEAVY SUBSOIL PHASE) These plots (18-20) were located in an area that is in native grasses and has never been plowed, but being within a cemetery area has had frequent mowing. It adjoins the Agronomy Farm at Lincoln, Nebraska. T ests on these native grass plots (Table 1) showed that they absorbed over 2 inches of water during the first 1.5 hours with an absorption rate of about 1.4 inches per hour at the end of this time. Following a delay of 10 days during which there was no rain-fall, water was again applied to the test areas with practically the same results as for the previous test. It will be shown later that if the second test is made only 1 day after the first, the rate of intake will be materially reduced. This seems to be due to the settling of soil immediately after wetting. Upon longer standing the soil seems to resume its original condition."
Photo 5 - tree 23 from end of 2 road junction tree in garden IMG_6222.JPG
The roots of this tree are at ground level where they compete with the grass and other plants. Replace the grass with GREEN MANURE such as everlasting spinach to provide nitrogen to the tree roots as a legume rather than the grass which takes away the water and any application of fertiliser or nutrients in an organic mulch. The roots of the tree can then migrate below ground.
The area where the above tree is planted is not usually trafficked by the public,
- since it is witin an enclosed public space.
- The same is true when there is a tree within a high raised bed also surrounded by grass as outside a shopping centre in Funchal, or
- where trees/shrubs are planted within a grassed area like on a bank or in a central reservation of a dual carriageway near the Forum in Funchal,
- or in between old graves with less than a mower's cutting width between them in cemeteries, or
- You are unable to do any more gardening like mowing in your home garden, but you then employ a gardener to just cut your lawn on a regular basis,
- Why not kill off the grass and replace with Clover Green Manure. The tree/shrub roots will get fed and maintenance will only be required once or twice a year to strim/cut the foliage down before flowering and leave on the ground for the worms to take into the soil?
10. Since I am currently adding to the 97 out 706 ferns to the Fern Gallery, I thought you might be interested in the following to explain why the current treatment of growing plants in pavements in Madeira is lacking in care:-
This row gives a very clear overall description of the
Cultural Needs of Plants
from Chapter 4 in Fern Grower's Manual by Barbara Joe Hoshizaki & Robbin C. Moran. Revised and Expanded Edition. Published in 2001 by Timber Press, Inc. Reprinted 2002, 2006. ISBN-13:978-0-88192-495-4.
"Understanding Fern Needs
Ferns have the same basic growing requirements as other plants and will thrive when these are met. There is nothing mysterious about the requirements - they are not something known only to people with green thumbs - but the best gardeners are those who understand plant requirements and are careful about satisfying them.
What, then, does a fern need?
All plants need water. Water in the soil prevents roots from drying, and all mineral nutrients taken up by the roots must be dissolved in the soil water. Besides water in the soil, most plants need water in the air. Adequate humidity keeps the plant from drying out. Leaves need water for photosynthesis and to keep from wilting.
All green plants need light to manufacture food (sugars) by photosynthesis. Some plants need more light than others, and some can flourish in sun or shade. Most ferns, however, prefer some amount of shade.
For photosynthesis, plants require carbon dioxide, a gas that is exhaled by animals as waste. Carbon dioxide diffuses into plants through tiny pores, called stomata, that abound on the lower surface of the leaves. In the leaf, carbon dioxide is combined with the hydrogen from water to form carbohydrates, the plant's food. This process takes place only in the presence of light and chlorophyll, a green pigment found in plant cells. To enhance growth, some commercial growers increase the carbon dioxide level in their greenhouses to 600ppm (parts per million), or twice the amount typically found in the air.
Plants need oxygen. The green plants of a plant do not require much oxygen from the air because plants produce more oxygen by photosynthesis than they use. The excess oxygen liberated from the plants is used by all animals, including humans. What do plants do with oxygen? They use it just as we do, to release the energy stored in food. We use energy to move about, to talk, to grow, to think - in fact, for all our life processes. Although plants don't talk or move much, they do grow and metabolize and must carry on all their life processes using oxygen to release the stored energy in their food.
Roots need air all the time. They get it from the air spaces between the soil particles. Overwatering displaces the air between soil particles with water, thereby removing the oxygen needed by the roots. This reduces the root's ability to absorb mineral nutrients and can foster root-rot. These gases need free access to the roots:-
Nitrogen Cycle -
Nitrogen is the most commonly limiting nutrient in plants. Legumes use nitrogen fixing bacteria, specifically symbiotic rhizobia bacteria, within their root nodules to counter the limitation. Rhizobia bacteria fix nitrogen which is then converted to ammonia. Ammonia is then assimilated into nucleotides, Amino Acids, vitamins and flavones which are essential to the growth of the plant. The plant root cells convert sugar into organic acids which then supply to the rhizobia in exchange, hence a symbiotic relationship between rhizobia and the legumes.
Oxygen Cycle -
No nutrient absorption occurs at the root zone unless oxygen is present.
Carbon Dioxide -
Plant roots uptake carbon dioxide to provide carbon for parts of the foliage.
Plants need minerals to grow properly. The minerals are mined from the soil by the plant's root system. If a certain mineral is missing, such as calcium needed for developing cell walls, then the plant will be stunted, discoloured, or deformed.
Some plants tolerate a wide range of temperatures, whereas others are fussy. If the temperature is too high or low, the machinery of the plant will not operate satisfactorily or will cease entirely.
The basic needs of plants are not hard to supply, but growing success depends on attending to these needs with care and exactitude. The remainder of this chapter is devoted to a discussion of these requirements, with the exception of mineral needs, which are discussed in Chapter 5."
11. Only Earthworms provide the tunnels which transport water, gas and nutrients to and from tree roots
When the roots of the plant requires the mineral nutrients dissolved in soil water, oxygen and nitrogen intake and waste gases output, it gets it through the action of the earthworm continously making tunnels to provide the transport system.
6000 species of Earthworm have no special respiratory organs. Gases are exchanged through the moist skin and capillaries, where the oxygen is picked up by the hemoglobin dissolved in the blood plasma and carbon dioxide is released. Water, as well as salts, can also be moved through the skin by active transport.
When the earthworms are denied access to the air above ground as in the case of pavements, then they die and the system round them dies as well. Since the roots are not getting the requirements then they also die off, and you are left with insufficient live root to support the tree.
The roots of each tree covered by tarmac, concrete or stone (in any country in the world) will create a Russian Roulette situation, where the asphixiated, dehydrated and starved tree may fall down. In this situation, there is only one place where the tree may get the water and nutrients requiired and that is by taking them from a branch, normally the ones nearest the ground to be able to compete for new branches and leaves at the top in competition with either other trees or buildings shading their tops. This can be seen in dense forests.
Human beings must be the only animal that is determined to kill itself by denying itself oxygen to breath.
Nitrogenous fertilizers tend to create acidic conditions, which are fatal to the worms, and dead specimens are often found on the surface following the application of substances such as DDT, lime sulphur, and lead arsenate. In Australia, changes in farming practices such as the application of superphosphates on pastures and a switch from pastoral farming to arable farming had a devastating effect on populations of the giant Gippsland earthworm, leading to their classification as a protected species. Globally, certain earthworms populations have been devastated by deviation from organic production and the spraying of synthetic fertilizers and biocides with at least three species now listed as extinct but many more endangered.
Vermicomposting of all organic "wastes" and addition of this organic matter, preferably as a surface mulch , on a regular basis will provide earthworms with their food and nutrient requirements, and will create the optimum conditions of temperature and moisture that will naturally stimulate their activity.
This earthworm activity aerates and mixes the soil, and is conducive to mineralization of nutrients and their uptake by vegetation. Certain species of earthworm come to the surface and graze on the higher concentrations of organic matter present there, mixing it with the mineral soil. Because a high level of organic matter mixing is associated with soil fertility, an abundance of earthworms is generally considered beneficial by farmers and gardeners.
12. The easiest and quickest solution for existing pavement areas using pavers or paving slabs is the SuDSFLOW System using paving spacers for permeable paving. Simply take up the paver/paving slab and re-install with the spacer and laying coarse if you cannot afford to also install the correct subgrade. You would then end up with redundant pavers/paving slabs and the same system could be used elsewhere.
The same SuDSFLOW System could be used on Domestic Driveways, Patios and Terraces, Car Parks and Footpaths including the laying coarse and subgrade to absorb the rainfall even if the soil is clay underneath. This would prevent the rainwater falling on your land from leaving it - which is illegal in the UK.
Instead of wasting your time using the existing compost bins in private gardens; use the vermicomposting system to create a better product for your home garden.
Use the same vermicomposting system on organic waste from restaurants, hotels and supermarkets, before mashing it into small compost particles and put into a water solution to give a monthly supply to the trees in your pavements in your village/ town/ council area.
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It can be very difficult for van drivers to find a required address for delivery.
The following is my plan of Moor Street Conservation Area in Rainham, Kent, England, produced in May 2011, which I then gave a copy to each of the houses with a request that they had a house sign erected close to the pavement of the A2 to indicate to van drivers where they were. Number 8 is not visible from the A2, so how does someone find it?
When Number 22 decided to build Numbers 18, 20 and 21 with planning notification perhaps affixed to a telegraph pole in South Bush Lane at what would be where the drive to numbers 20 and 21 would be built, Medway Council Planning Authority stated that only 3 houses could have drive access to the main road A2 to Newington. Therefore, Number 22 had to build a new drive to South Bush Lane instead of their old drive to the A2.
Number 14 decided to change a wooden shed into a habitable dwelling by installing a kitchen and bathroom as well as a bedroom etc. Thus Number 16 came into use by his daughter. Number 14 put Number 14 and Number 16 up for sale. The Land Register sent information about this to Medway Council to the Rates Department and the Planning Department. Having had no planning permission, the planning department put an enforcement notice on Number 16 in May. It was sold as an independent property in December of the same year. Before the new owners moved in the previous owner trashed it. The new owners who also bought Number 14 were upset and applied for planning permission and got it despite the rule that a drive to the A2 could not have more than 3 properties using it as now it was 4, despite my protest about Numbers 15, 17 and 18 having 1 rule and 12, 13, 14 and 16 having another.
Number 12 has had a new owner during the last 2 years and is being sold, with the following in its Estate Agent Description - "Another big benefit to this property is a separate parking area which houses a garage and a barn, which to the right person and necessary consents could easily become a useful outbuilding of some sorts."
Number 12 is split between 1 side of Number 13 (my property) and the other side where they own a garage and a building with a corrugated asbestos roof and what was a pigsty building alongside the Drive of Number 14 and property of Number 16 respectively, together with some land between them.
Some prospective buyers have thought that the building with its asbestos roof could easily be converted into another habitable dwelling.
If Medway Council then ignored it's own ruling of only 3 properties having access from 1 drive onto the main road because this would make it 5, then they could also ignore the facts that they allowed
- an unplanned building to be built, enforced against, sold and approved as Number 16 - Property 4 with permission to use my drive without my authority.
- as well as the condition put on Number 22 that before they built a riding area, that the baum of earth removed from a large area by their U-shaped stables in preparation to be used as a car park for new houses as a repeat of the same idea carried out by the previous owner of Number 22; be replaced from the edge of 1 of their fields, was ignored, even when I informed the planning authority.
The existing water supply and electricity supply is insufficient for a household, so where is the access? Under the drive? In which case, the water pipe and electricity cable would need to be in accordance with the Pipe Bedding and Trench Backfill Details in Standard Drawing No. HE/12 under the 450mm (18 inch) road construction for this 192 inch (480 cms) wide drive, which is in excess of 1200 inches (3000 cms) of length. The existing water supply to Number 12 would need to be relocated into the same pipe bedding. I would have thought they they would also require my permission to do that on my land.
It would need a cesspit - A cesspit is a sealed underground tank that simply collects wastewater and sewage. There is no processing or treatment involved. A septic tank could not be used because "installing a soakaway can be a challenge due to regulations on where they can be placed. They must not be too close to buildings, boundaries or watercourses, be away from electrical cables or pipework and not be part of a road, driveway or other area where vehicles could pass over it and cause damage." The same reasons would stop them either using my septic tank or the one at Number 15. The main public sewage drain for Rainham ends at Number 10. From that top of hill towards the Newington direction, all the remaining properties of Moor Street Conservation Area have to have a cesspit. Numbers 28 to 37 have sealed tanks above ground with a drive strong enough to take 2000 gallon wastewater tankers on a regular basis.
My existing drive would need to be replaced by the proposed owners of new Number 38 by a minor access road in order to take the extra weight on a regular basis including the depth of winter, before any building work was carried out. This would require excavating for the new wearing course - 80mm, base course - 30mm, roadbase - 50mm, sub-base - 290mm and capping layer for this minor access road in Standard Drawing No. HE/03 of about 270-320 cubic yards. My drive includes greater dimensions than required to provide car turning within site curtilage with my garage being the same top position as in the right hand diagram of Standard Drawing No. HED/03. The other users of my drive can only use the drive for access and not for parking or leaving any item on it for any time and this would include any pipe from a Waste-tanker. That would mean that that waste-tanker would have to drive over the drive and park on their land before extracting the waste from their cesspit.
The following comes from an article "Septic tank regulations - the whats, whys and wherefores " by UKDP - The UK Drainage Professionals:-
- Building Regulations 2010 – Drainage and waste disposal.
This Building regulations document, produced by the Government, outlines the requirements for septic tanks, drainage fields, cesspits (or cesspools – it’s the same thing) and sewage treatment plants. The main aim is to make sure that they are:
- Located in the right place
- Sufficient in size for the property (or properties) connected to them
- Not going to pollute local water courses
- Appropriate for the local ground conditions – this is particularly important for drainage fields (or soakaway systems)
- Emptied and maintained regularly to ensure that they can function properly
- If you are installing a new septic tank, sewage treatment plant or cesspool, you will need to contact your local Council to apply for Building Control approval. Similarly, undertaking works to your existing drainage system, particularly if you are looking to change the system somehow, also needs approval. This is because drainage is classed as a 'controlled service or function' which is why Building Control need to be involved.
- Cesspools (or cesspits)
Generally speaking, a cesspool (which is just a holding tank for the waste from your property, providing no treatment) is seen as a last resort as far as a drainage system for your property goes.
The basics from this document relating to cesspools are:
- They should be located at least 7 metres from any habitable parts of buildings
- They should be sited within 30 metres of a vehicle access point
- The capacity below the level of the inlet should be at least 18,000 litres for 2 users. This should be increased by 6,800 litres for each additional user.
- They should have no openings apart from the pipe coming in, access for emptying and ventilation
- Environment Agency PPG4 (Pollution Prevention Guidelines)
In short, the PPG4 helps you to work out which type of drainage system is suitable for your property. There are lots of considerations as to what would work – and also what the Environment Agency (EA) will or will not allow. It also lets you know when you need to gain consent from the EA, as you often need to get permission before installing or changing an off mains drainage system.
- The document goes into some detail about percolation tests and drainage field size. Percolation tests assess the porosity of the soil at your property, and it is this that tells you if a drainage field or soakaway is suitable, and if it is suitable it tells you what size it needs to be.
- There is a very detailed and excruciatingly long British Standard document relating to exactly how percolation tests should be undertaken. Even the name of the document will put you off reading it – BS6297:2007+A1:2008.
This document outlines the size that any septic tank, sewage treatment plant or cesspit needs to be in order to adequately serve the property (or properties) that will connect to it.
- Each type of tank comes in various different sizes, and the correct tank size is determined by the number of bedrooms the property has.
The opening between my boundary hedge and their garage is about 6 metres. My turn round area extends past their garage. The distance from their barn to my boundary hedge opposite is about 14 metres. Currently their car is parked parallel to the barn beyond 7 metres from it. The remaining distance to my boundary hedges is used to turn their car round to drive out, since they do not have a right of access to the remainder of my drive and so have to use their own land to turn round in. The cesspit needs to be at least 7 metres away from the habitable dwellings at property numbers 13, 15 and 16, while still allowing for a waste-tanker to park within their land whilst emptying it or for other 2 x 4 metre vehicles (cars) to park and turn round. This could be very difficult to achieve within their land area.
A soakaway has to be created on their land to take up to a 2 inch (5 cm) downpour falling on the roofs (Building Regulations) of their buildings, since it unwise to direct that same rainwater into their cesspit.
When the new owner of Number 22 put forward plans to start the same process of moving stables, creating new buildings and following this by changing them to houses; he included a new external building for his children to play in with a toilet. Due to this extra toilet for his 3 children, his proposed planning application included a replacement cesspit, which according to the dimensions on the plan would take 90,000 gallons assuming it was only 2 metres deep - enough for 90 houses (Only 2 households use my septic tank, which is emptied once a year). I pointed out to Medway Council that this would require 45 tankers to empty and therefore those tankers would require a minor access road in the middle of their field to empty it. I also pointed out that since the cesspit was close to South Bush Lane and that the field sloped down to it, that car drivers might object to driving through the liquid sewage if the cesspit overflowed. The surrounding fields owned by Number 22 would be sufficient land for an extra 90 houses, if they kept on repeating the planning trick of building buildings and then changing them and the old stables to houses and new stables on a regular basis. I objected to the plan and provided a copy of my objections to all the other houses in the Conservation Area. This created enough other objectors for the approval of the proposed plan to be moved from the proposed plan's Planning Officer to the full Council Planning Committe. The proposed cesspit had by then disappeared and the revised plan was rejected by the Council.
New owners have continued to build more wooden buildings and extensions.
The corrugated asbestos roof would need to be carefully removed by experts.
It is in the existing curtilage of a Listed Building in a Conservation Area. This would mean Listed Building approval without any changes; to the external appearance of the building to the date when it was listed, not when it was built.
It is possible that this time, Number 13 would be informed about the planning application, instead of them being placed on a lampost or telegraph pole away from Number 13, and the first one knows about the approved plans of first changing 2 barns to holiday flats, then those and the stables to houses, then to larger houses and new stables was the builders moving in and building 18, 20 and 21, despite being next door. For some years I then paid to have a listing of every planning application made to Medway Council each week - I believe that is now online and further payments are not required to protect one's own property.
Although, when the Land Register digitised my paper-based Land Register, it donated one of my bedrooms to 2 Eastmoor Farm Cottages and it took £100 cost to my lawyer to get it back again, despite the fact that it was the Land Register who could not do their job.
The current position is that the independant Local Authority Medway can accept a shed converted into a habitable dwelling without planning permission, with illegal sewage drainage linkage to an existing cesspit tank and sold as a separate property, despite their enforcement orders. Then, they approved a planning aplication by the new owners to have the trashed kitchen and bathroom re-installed and so restored to being a separate habitable dwelling. Did they check that the cesspit next door was of a sufficient size to take the waste from the inhabitants in the 3 properties instead of the original 2?
This would mean that anybody could repeat that same trick in any property within Medway despite the following consequences:-
- A minor detail is shown by the article Drinking Water deprivation in Medway, England in the table to the extreme left. This indicates that with all the proposed new buildings in Medway between now and 2035, that about 30,000 people in them would have no access to water by 2035 according to the plans set out by Southern Water. Adding illegal ones to that would reduce the time period before Medway runs out of water for its new inhabitants. Replacing land with buildings and roads reduces the volume of rainwater that can be collected for use by humans as the rainwater falling on them goes into storm drains leading to rivers and thence the sea.
This program of new buildings in excess of the infrastructure required to service them is continuing throughout the remainder of the area serviced by Southern Water.
Each new building/road also reduces the area for plants to give us oxygen to keep us alive.
- My next door neighbours may not have been able to transfer from their original doctor at the other end of Medway to a local one. At the Health Centre that I frequent, it had 4 surgeries, yellow, blue, red and green. The green one closed in January and the other surgeries could not accept all those patients and my neighbours had to then go on a waiting list. Those surgeries are technically out of our Conservation Area locality and so do not have to accept us. There are no other surgeries which are suitably located to service Moor Street Conservation Area. My red surgery had some doctors retire in March 2019, they have not been able to replace all of them yet.
- There was a proposal to build 200 houses in the field opposite our house. We did point out at the time that there was only 1 primary school place left in the area. I have not seen any plans for new schools to service this increase in population.
We also pointed out that since all waste sewage would have to be pumped up to the main sewage drain in the adjoining road, that it would be sensible to install a second pump with its own generator, so that this would prevent the sewage from overflowing into the railway cutting for trains from London to Canterbury and Dover; if the only 1 pump failed due to mechanical fault or loss of electric supply. The 200 house proposal was rejected. A revised one for 300 instead of 200 houses has now appeared.
- Being old and decrepid, I am no longer able to walk all that fast and so would shuffle along the A2 into Rainham. During rush-hours, I can beat the traffic to the second set of traffic lights - 500 yards from my house?
Despite all the new building works, there does not seem to be a plan to convert the Lower Rainham Road into a dual carriageway, since the A2 and the M2 are the only other routes that take traffic East-West in Medway. When I worked in City Way in Rochester, it was quicker for me to drive up to the M2, along to Chatham junction and back down to City Way, 10 years ago, than it was to drive the direct route along the A2. Lower Rainham Road currently has both a speed limit of 20 mph, chicanes and traffic lights in order to slow the traffic down with the resulting tailbacks at rush-hours. Fairly soon with the breeding of traffic lights on the A2 running through Medway, Medway will be gridlocked for much of the day.
You never know, but Medway might then use the London with its Ultra Low Emission Zone charges to reduce vehicle ownership within Medway and so get rid of traffic queues. The most polluting vehicles in London will have to pay a daily charge of £12.50 for cars, motorcycles and vans, and £100 for lorries, buses and coaches.
Perhaps they could also continue to increase the use of speed humps and decrease the speed limit from 30 to 20 and thus increase pollution as vehicles were stuck in queues, where they could be charged car parking fees using the existing cctv system with the same charging system as operates at the Dartford M25 Crossing.
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