Stump Disposal ???

dave1949 · Mar 8, 2010

20 20 said:
Just a heads up on burning a stump in the ground. Years back I was burning a large pine stump. It burned real nice, even lit a few extra fires over 20-30"away The fire traveled under ground by following the root systems. An old pine forest can make a great fire place. Just a heads up if you're burning stumps watch for what you may not see. Oh and the spreading fire didn't show until the day after the stump fire.

In dry ground with deep duff, those fires can smolder un-noticed for days, then along comes a day with a good breeze and they start up again. Not good.
Dave.

20 20 · Mar 8, 2010

dave1949 said:
In dry ground with deep duff, those fires can smolder un-noticed for days, then along comes a day with a good breeze and they start up again. Not good.
Dave.

Yep it was a pretty scary feeling, we were lucky. We just happened to be walking out back and noticed smoke. I kicked the ground were the smoke was comming from and it was enough to start a good blaze. Again luck was on our side, one of our ponds had just been done earlier that year. We carried a bunch of buckets of water, and hooked up the gas water pump.

spruce Deere · Mar 8, 2010

The best way I have found to be rid of stumps is to use them for fill or bury them deep. Places along some of the creeks here, they use stumps as bank armor, erosion control. Burning them works better if you can beat all the dirt out of them and have a lot of fines to burn with them like limbs and brush not to mention all the time, beer and attention a fire takes

not that its a bad thing

savageactor7 · Mar 9, 2010

Over the years we've had many drainage projects requiring the cutting of 100's of trees.

I always had a large hole dug & buried the stumps...any excess top soil or clay would be piled up and used around the farm.

Years ago when I got my CUT my dealer talked me out of a BH suggesting that in the off season a 'real' BH could be hired for the small price of a monthly payment.

So far we've had 5 major projects totaling close to 3k feet and still haven't paid out what the cost of a CUT BH would have been.

Taylortractornut · Mar 9, 2010

At work we use stumps for eroson control especally silt dams. Just ple the stumps up at the end of a hollow and add a lttle brush n front of them and t will stop about 95 percent of your silt. Others of a mixed sizes are used for wildlfe habitat. We may place a few in a fashon to leave some gaps and tunnels. All sorts of animals like to make homes in these.
SOme tmes if they are out of the way and large enough Ill dig a borrow pit and stack the stumps n there and then back fill partially. Ill let a good rain or too settle all the air spaces then *** more soil. Have several thats been buried for over 10 years no problems. When we cleared the 4 acres of pine stumps here behind the shop saved every stump. Each one was 10 to 30 inches in diameter. I would take them up the hill and set them in rows and every few days Id take the old backhoe and rake the dirt of them and pick them up and drop them on one another to beat off the clay. When it was said and done there was over 170 stumps in the pile. One still night we set a fire in it and thought we had messed up. It was a super hot fire. All that was left the next morning was one green root in some wet clay.

We had a pine tree about 20 inches in diameter had been lightning struck. It stayed there a few months till all the bark fell and the power Company cut it down. Dad cut it up in 2 foot sections and piled it up around the stump with all the limbs. Dad lit it and it burned all night and then it burned under ground for 33 days after that. We put several sticks of wood down that hole for the entire 33 days. When it finally went out we ran a grade rod down it nearly 10 feet deep.

IslandTractor · Mar 9, 2010

I dig up a fair number of stumps. Mostly small softwood about 8-12 inches trunk diameter and weighing in the 500-700lb range. Some I use as landbreaks to start a hedgerow along a road. The rest I bury. I usually just find an area where I have already dug holes near each other to get the stumps out and expand it and deepen it. Sometimes I have trouble digging deep in the spring time as the water table is quite high then but a least the stumps don't float. It has been only a few years but I haven't noted any depression in the land. No big deal if I did as I'd just add fill periodically.

Last photo is a year after clearing/burying.