Its stump grinding day! Finally the last of the dead oak is gone.

Locust Fork

Its taken several years, but today was the final day for the center oak in front of our house.    We had it trimmed, several years ago thinking it would help it....but it was just a matter of time before it was completely dead.   We paid two different local guys to cut it down and they quickly learned they had bitten off more than they could chew.    A couple months ago we just went ahead and hired a tree service to come on out and take it down.    They also chopped off the tops of two holy trees that are beside my house.   The pile of trunk, limbs and such by the side of the road was ENORMOUS!    The final thing was the stump grinder.    He came today.    It was pretty dang impressive to see.    This machine was like a video game.....remote controlled with a spinning wheel that pulverized everything in its way.   I asked how much something like that costs???    He said nearly $100K.       I don't know how a business owner pays that for a machine and just lets a bunch of guys drive around playing with it.

chiefr

Good mulch.

Locust Fork

Its almost like a fine powder out there.   The youngest of the dogs here has been all about running around.....stopping and spinning in the mulch....and taking off again.    She's a total mess right now.   

Junkballer

You should've asked him how much the replacement blades cost......... , unbelievable and they wear out fast.  They've got to turn a lot of tricks to justify the machine and expenses.

allen griggs

I hired that same machine four months ago.   What a great machine.   As Locust Fork said, the guy doesn't even touch the machine, he runs it off of a computer screen, it is like playing a video game.
He told me the Vermeer costs $80,000.   
He told me, you don't replace the blade, which is a big steel wheel.   The blade has 28 teeth, and one tooth is about 1 1/2 inches long.  Every four or five hours, you replace the teeth.  Just get a 3/8 inch socket and unscrew the tooth.  Told me it take a half hour to change out the teeth.

I like how your guy is wearing his Corona mask.  Is he going to catch Corona from the pond, or from the machine?
There is not enough sawdust put into the air to where you need the mask to protect yourself from sawdust.   The "sawdust" is big chips of wet wood chips it would not get into your lungs.   PC corona frenzy even in north Alabama.

wpage

Those stumps are contentious. We are working on a old 36 in diameter pitch pine stump. Trying chemicals from Home depo and  Lowes. Drilling holes and pouring in the chems and hot water. Hoping for some active ingredinants. So far nothing much. So your solution looks like the cure. 
  Thanks for posting. That is some machine ! Wow technologies...

grdad45

Back in the early '70s I helped a relative clear a lot of stumps to clear a field. We used DYNAMITE. If you placed the charge just right, the stump would go up to 20 feet high. It was a BLAST to put it mildly. We would dig down at an angle under the trunk, put the  dynamite there with a 2 minute fuse, and get the heck out of there. 

NeoBlackdog

wpage said:

Those stumps are contentious. We are working on a old 36 in diameter pitch pine stump. Trying chemicals from Home depo and  Lowes. Drilling holes and pouring in the chems and hot water. Hoping for some active ingredinants. So far nothing much. So your solution looks like the cure. 
  Thanks for posting. That is some machine ! Wow technologies...

Burn it out.  Drill holes as deep as you can and fill 'em with diesel.  Let it sit a couple days so the diesel soaks into the wood and then light it up.   

Locust Fork

wpage said:

Those stumps are contentious. We are working on a old 36 in diameter pitch pine stump. Trying chemicals from Home depo and  Lowes. Drilling holes and pouring in the chems and hot water. Hoping for some active ingredinants. So far nothing much. So your solution looks like the cure. 
  Thanks for posting. That is some machine ! Wow technologies...

After hearing how much they charge to come take trees down we avoided calling a big company and gave every yahoo for miles around a chance at it.    It ended up costing us more in the end because of that.    If we had just called them in the beginning it would have probably cost us $2000 for them to come take the whole tree down.    We paid the first guy $400 to trim the tree and get all the dead limbs.    It died the following year, so we paid another guy another $400 to cut it down and he just took every remaining limb off of it leaving a giant totem pole (as tall as my 2 story home) trunk in my yard....he did leave his ropes and ladder when he left so I guess I got something out of that ordeal.   The trunk ended up splitting and breaking our fence, costing us around $800 in repairs and still leaving a 12 foot tall rotting tree trunk in the yard.    I called the tree guys......FINALLY.....and they came out for $600.    They also took the tops out of some giant holly trees that were getting out of control, so I did get more than just the dead tree dealt with.

If I had just paid the big fee in the beginning of all of this it would have not cost me all the nonsense over the past two years and it would have been handled in a weekend.   Instead, I've dealt with yahoos of all kinds, a broken fence and that giant dead tree in my yard for two years.

Locust Fork

grdad45 said:

Back in the early '70s I helped a relative clear a lot of stumps to clear a field. We used DYNAMITE. If you placed the charge just right, the stump would go up to 20 feet high. It was a BLAST to put it mildly. We would dig down at an angle under the trunk, put the  dynamite there with a 2 minute fuse, and get the heck out of there. 

That sounds like something my dad would have done.      

victorj19

Here's what might have happened:  "We paid the first guy $400 to trim the tree and get all the dead limbs.    It died the following year ..."  

Learned this year that oaks need to be trimmed in the winter when there are no insects.  There beetle that chan smell a fresh oak cut for miles.  They come in and leave a disease (a fungus?) in the open cut and kills the tree.