I dare you to try sticking 1ft of pointy chocolate up someone's nus without some kind of social lubricant.

We're pretty precious in this country really. I realised our self-image as a tough DIY culture was pretty shaky when I was in a small town in France watching a guy do construction on his house. He was sitting perched over the peak of his roof, leaning out to cut the end off a new beam protruding horizontally about a metre below the apex. He was using a chainsaw. One-handed. Leaning out over the edge of the roof and down (over a busy alleyway), with the other hand balancing himself lightly against the roof. No hard hat, no earmuffs, no safety glasses, no gloves, no ropes or straps. And the best part was the ciggy hanging from his mouth with the ash dropping onto the chainsaw. My father-in-law had to take a photo of him of course, so the guy saw us and gave a casual wave. With the chainsaw hand...

All sorted - hedge chopped in half heightwise and no accidents at all so I'm stoked!

Pictures to follow as soon as I can upload them.

Thanks all for contributing, means a lot

ok, so here is the hedge after hacking at it with just hand tools and standing on the hedge, this achieved bugger all meant next weekend it was chainsaw + scaffold time:



And this one shows one side topped and moving onto the other side.



The trunks coming down were touching the ground & still coming up to the new level of the hedge, so I guess we took the hedge down to 45% of original height.

The amount of branches that came off is incredible and completely covered our back lawn (about 80m2), plus gave us a decent amount of firewood too, which is a bonus.

Guess I'm gonna be spending the next few weekends shuttling green waste to the dump, as the branches when stacked in a heap made a pile close to 2m high x 4m long x 3m high!!

Thanks again for all the useful info + also funny comments - I expected nothing less from here :P

leave it for a few weeks, then call a bonfire!!!!

sooby wrote:

Hedge trimmers would have worked sweet.

Yeah, I'd actually love to bonfire the heap, but dammit we're in the suburbs and don't think the neighbours would appreciate their windows melting from the heat...

Looks like a fantastic job. The scaffolding was a good idea, I just had a ladder when I butchered my hedge.

When I've done major surgery on my back yard, I found it's cheaper to hire a 7.5 m3 jumbo bin for around $220 than to hire a trailer and pay for petrol and fees at the landfill. Plus it's a lot less time consuming - all those trips to the tip use up sacred riding time!

For getting rid of the waste product: A mulcher is your friend!

Hire centres have some big suckers that dont cost the earth to hire....just spread the mulch out on a garden or keep in a pile and pass it on to someone wanting to do a bit of landscaping

And when you've had enough of your chainsaw you can put it towards one of these puppies...