Either my Google fu is weak or I’ve overlooked it. Does anyone have a reference on capacity per hour (pounds, tons, cubic yards) of 6, 8, 10, 12” wood chippers? Also is there a rough guide if I’m chipping under 4-6” diameter limbs can an oversized machine better pull in side branches and reduce chainsaw work?
12" chipper will chip more than you can feed it. Should fill a 10yd box in about 20-30 minutes if you can get the wood to it. It should swallow a 10" limb with a 4" y in it if the wood is tough enough not to shear or smear in the feed roll.
My limited experience with a rental to chip cut up tops is that the chipper can eat what you feed it faster than you can feed it. If someone had diced the brush up into small pieces and tossed it into random piles it becomes a lot more difficult to feed your chipper. And you will hhave to deal with jams from time to time. Which in tha case of the chipper that my father had meant jacking open the feed which slowed the job down considerably. That chippers feed didn't have a hydraulic to open it. If you have un-molested tops and branches then the bigger the chipper better so you can just run the butt ends in. There is also a noticeable difference between chipping the likes of black locust or shagbark hickory and white pine.
I’ve got this to deal with if one neighbor or the fire chief won’t okay burning a large brush pile. Really thinking about getting the 10 or 12” chipper and a mini excavator with a thumb and feed it as fast as I can push piles of brush up with my tractor and loader with forks on it. Either chip into large piles for later use or into a couple 40 cubic yard dumpsters for hauling off.
Conservative estimate is I’ve got 40-50 cords of wood on the ground to deal with. Giving a bunch away in log form and giving permission to almost anyone who ask to cut all the want. Simply not enough time or energy to deal with cutting up branches. I want them gone in fastest most cost effective manor. Logs can be stacked and dealt with later.
No big deal. Have a beer and a smoke, if that's your thing, and relax. Once the folks come through to get the good firewood out, get your rental chipper and run it through, it won't take long, or be much work. Where do you need to be that is causing you so much stress? Trust me, it's not worth getting so worked up about. We are all just a morning mist.
Cut out any usable firewood if you're able or care about that. The remaining branches should then be manageable to feed into the chipper. If your mess is really big and rental time/money an issue place all the branches you have into piles that are easy to feed into the chipper before you rent it. If that mess is bigger than what I'm looking at you can call your regional Vermeer dealer for prices on tub grinder and horizontal grinder rental prices.
Warner Anyone want Oak in SW Mo Easy Livin' 3000 no stress just a lot of work to do, I’m working 60+ hours a week and had 75 trees cut down on a property I just purchased, trying to get it cleaned up and ready to open a new business. JPDavis yep it’s alot bigger mess than it looks!
12 inch chipper minimum if you are going to try to feed with a machine usually on small clearing jobs we had a 18 inch cost @400.00 a day and we used a machine with a grapple to feed looks like a lot of firewood there but if you are in a hurry just remember that when you open up the job and let people cut firewood a lot of times they will cherry pick first and you will be left with a lot of short cutoffs forks and short piled branches which are a mess to deal with for cleanup you have to hand feed short stuff tough to do with a machine sometimes it sucks having to chip all that wood but if you are in that much of a hurry it is the faster way just remember it will be one hell of a chip pile when you are feeding with a machine you are also able to pre crush a lot of the forks before you put them in chipper almost forgot make sure chipper has auto feed if you are feeding with a machine
I also forgot to ask if you tried getting a tree/forest crew to give you a bid on burning small contained piles? 2 months ago I was in charge of removing about 500 dying Leyland cypress trees on one of my employers properties. We fell and bucked out all the firewood then arranged small piles for another company to burn. The process of burning the piles down to ash took about 10 hours, it went incredibly fast. They used an accelerant comprised of 50% gas and 50% bar oil and were able to burn many green piles down to nothing with this mixture. Amazing to watch and faster than I ever imagined.
JB Sawman 12” machines rent for $550 day here, I’ll check on 18” and tub grinders, good the know about confirming the auto feed. I’m keeping the cutting to friends and family so far they have taken at least 2 large gooseneck flatbed trailer loads and numerous pickup loads out and barely dented the pile! Next weekend we will have tractors and loaders out there to skid stuff closer to road, loading logs into trailers to cut up later and making me a pile of logs I will keep for lumber and firewood! JPDavis I’d like to burn the piles but it’s inside city limits, so trying to get the appropriate waivers. How big were the cypress trees? That sounds like quite a project! If I burn I typically use a diesel, gas and oil mixture in a garden sprayer with leaf blower on it to really get it started. May up my game and rent a couple 36” fans and make a quick ductwork out of some used tin to spread up the burning process! I’d love to hear more about the accelerant and process they used. Anyone ever use an air curtain incinerator? They claim ability to burn up to 15 tons per hour of vegetation with the self contained skid mounted units. The trench system can be scaled up to an unbelievable capacity 12-15’ wide, 15’ deep and 45’ long trench.
The Cypress ranged in size between 15ft to 40ft. They were all in different stages of decline, some completely dead others very much alive. The company we used, Arrow Fire and Land Management, employs a crew of around 20 people and handles large burn projects from homeowners to the forest service and other government agencies. Arrow Fire & Land Management LLC Tree Removal & Defensible Space There maybe more information on their website about the burning process. I was told that the mixture they used to start the fires and keep them going was just gas and bar oil. The piles they burn are about as big as a truck and are worked over by their crew with shovels to ensure a continuous and even burn. Again, the fact that each pile seemed to be burned down to nothing but ash in a matter of only a few hours amazed me. << a link of what it looks like. On the topic of air curtain incinerators, I've only ever seen one in use and that was at the City of Prescott transfer station. It didn't seem to be anywhere as fast as burning up piles individually, but maybe the model they had was old or not being run correctly. In any event they got rid of it after a year, so I'm guessing it wasn't paying off for them.
Timberdog yes it’s all oak mostly white with some red and black mixed in. JPDavis quite the piles of brush you had there, was there a strategy on location of the piles or simply close but not to close so you could work them individually? Great news Fire Chief said I can burn as long as neighbors don’t complain, most of them are business that are closed on weekends I should be GTG! Going to try to get a big dent made this weekend, maybe burn some.
quite the piles of brush you had there, was there a strategy on location of the piles or simply close but not to close so you could work them individually? <<<< exactly, close but not too close so each pile could not only be worked over individually, but managed in a safe manner.
