Arborcheck and the Microbiometer

The first blog post of 2023, I know it’s seven months in but we’ve been incredibly busy. We’re currently averaging 1000 trees inspected a month, plus terravent and Bite work.

We’ve also been spending money.

In order to add both a better level of service and the ability to back up our bullshit, we’ve bought two new pieces of kit. The Arborcheck is for checking tree health and vitality, while the microBiometer, is for checking soil health, specifically fungal and bacterial. Both machines will be used to give baseline and follow-up numbers on all our tree care projects, with the Arborcheck also coming out to play on all of BS5837:2012 work, alongside all of our other equipment.

Why are using Arborcheck for all BS5837 work, it’s not necessary!

The reason we’ll be using Arborcheck for all our BS5837:2012 is simple, it can be used to justify all of our tree classifications, we’ve just used it on a project to justify the lowering of a trees class from its original A class to B as Arborcheck showed reduced vitality prior to planning submission, and will be using it on projects requiring supervision to give real-time accurate data of the health of the trees throughout the build process.

I know that there are incredibly vocal individuals in the industry that say “You only need a mallet and a probe to check the health and condition of a tree”. But I disagree, the industry is constantly evolving, the equipment is out there so why not utilise it to its full potential and have some quantifiable data that make the industry more professional? After all, you wouldn’t use an electrician who sticks his finger into sockets to test for faults or a mechanic whose toolbox consists of a lump hammer, three adjustable spanners, and a screwdriver, would you?