as I was mowing the lawn late this afternoon I was feeling a little stir crazy... So I took down the huge spruce right next to my house that my wife has complained about since we bought the house. I'll post better pics tomorrow as I begin to dismantle it... I'm glad I took 4 years to think about this one because I don't think it could have gone better! Oh wait, did I mention I also took down a maple with it
Looks like a bit of clean up with the branches, but nice pile of firewood. And the wife should be happy too! Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
Absolutely, happy wife...well, you know. safety was my #1, I had a 150' 1/2" cable hooked to the tree at about 50' And then my wife kept tension on it with my truck. There were too many variables with this one for any corners to be cut. My well is only 15' away and I also had power lines 30' away. So I'm quite thankful for a safe landing.
I'm a thrill seeker for sure, this was more of a necessity for our peace of mind. My new roof is going on next week, and I wanted it down before that. I def have a long weekend in store!
Thats a big one! Good for you on a successful take down! That will heat the house for quite some time. If that was dropped in my yard id be happy for the house warming btus for sure!!
Nice job! I hate dealing with maple branches there is always so many of them Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk
I didn't get accomplished nearly as much as I wanted to today. I did however get it sectioned into 12 footers and skidded them up the yard to a better location. I'm most likely not going to use this as firewood, not that I don't find Spruce to be beneficial to many people as firewood but for me it's just not worth the time and effort with such little return on heat value. My question to all of you is this, if I ask my friend to bring his mill over to Slab this out would it be worth either of our time? What fer kind of amount of lumber should I expect to yield?
Nice job! I have a large (not as large as yours) spruce to drop at my MIL in August sometime. It has a pretty good lean to it so I will hook up the Tundra or a friends backhoe to it and fall it away from the street. Not looking forward to delimbing the SOB but what is a guy to do. At least my MIL will have her firewood for 2017. I plan on starting a thread with the scenario and progress in a couple of weeks.
That looks like a nice sized trunk. Yeild depends on the mill and sawyer, but I think youll end up with a nice pile in any case. I sliced one up at Backwoods Savage's GTG (think it was a spruce) and it had sort of a salmon colored heart wood. I'd definitely make it into lumber instead of firewood if it was mine.
As far as "return on heat value", I look at it like this, any low btu wood I use during fall/spring "light heat load days" saves more of my Oak for January. This could be a better lumber tree though... either way
Last year I started running a "blend" of harder and softer woods - all winter long. It started because of the lower-than-expected heat demand: I had brought a face cord of locust up onto the porch, but it never really got cold enough to need it. I didn't want to move it again, so I burned it, mostly mixed with red pine. Worked out great - I could sort of tailor the load to meet the daily heat demands. That said, in terms of return on processing investment, I don't think splitting spruce would be very much fun with all those branches.
Thanks for chiming in, Shawn I was hoping that youd give your input lol. Yeah like I said there's no way I'm working this up into firewood, if I don't decide to have my buddy come over with his mill I'll definitely give it to another one of my friends who will gladly burn it in his OWB. I'm pretty sure I'm going to mill it though, I have this spruce and a large white pine that is close twice the size of the spruce that I will also have him mill. Id like to then use the lumber to make a woodshed. I don't have any objections to burning conifers, for me it is honestly just not worth it because my house is close 3500 sq ft. Im heating almost exclusively with an nc30, So I try to fill it with high btu wood for long even burn times. Now obviously if I didn't have access to plentiful amounts of good hardwoods I would be changing my tune.
I had to take down a Blue Spruce in my front yard that died of a fungus. It was the first tree I planted here in 1975. Hated it died. But it was trying to fall on the house one windy November day. Normally, my rule is, don't cut down a tree that can possibly fall on anything of any value. Well not me included. But it had to come down. So my son and I roped it and dropped in the street. No harm except to my feelings.
This one was 88 ft, more than double my house height. It honestly didn't bother me as it had a gentle lean away from the house. My wife on the other hand was scared it would fall on the house given the right storm. So of course I do everything she wants me to do
