Large PTO chipper

[bigsnowdog]

Okay I would have thought that chipping would still let them eggs live. Still just burning sounds like the least labor intensive over cutting hauling and chipping. I do a lot chipping and it takes a lot of effort to feed the chipper. Especially if limbs and fluff get caught up in the feed chute. Even with hydraulic feed the stuff can clog up.
Pushing the stuff into piles grabbing some favorite beverage and let them burn. With the leaf blower if you can get some metal pipe to put closer into the core of the fire will help it burn. If you get the leaf blower too close it can get hot and melt down.

Stove pipe, yes. Great idea. I had also thought about initially building some towers like the cribbing house movers use. Put two down, then put the next two at right angles, then the next two at right angles to those, and so on. Using 5 or 6 foot lengths, then fill the center with material, including some dry stuff. Diesel is your friend.

My experience in burning green conifers is that you have to delimb them, otherwise you can't make a dense enough pile to get hot enough to burn. It's like stacking up green, fire resistant, tumbleweeds.

 

[Greenpole bandit]

Yes I cut them down so the end is about 6" and then stuff the whole thing in. I have been cutting mulberry and spruce and it has had no problem. I have to cut a limb or two off sometimes if it won't pull it thru but 95% go thru without problem. I have been amazed at the power and it does not s,low down at all. This has a speed control for the feeder so you can adjust it to the toughness of the material you are feeding it.

I have cut and burned I have had loggers come in and this is by far the easiest and best solution for me. Just my opinion. I do not get to my property as often as I like and this sure makes the time there very productive.

 

[bigsnowdog]

Yes I cut them down so the end is about 6" and then stuff the whole thing in. I have been cutting mulberry and spruce and it has had no problem. I have to cut a limb or two off sometimes if it won't pull it thru but 95% go thru without problem. I have been amazed at the power and it does not s,low down at all. This has a speed control for the feeder so you can adjust it to the toughness of the material you are feeding it.

I have cut and burned I have had loggers come in and this is by far the easiest and best solution for me. Just my opinion. I do not get to my property as often as I like and this sure makes the time there very productive.

How are you prepping the trees to burn?

 

[Greenpole bandit]

I just stack them teepee style douse them with diesel and use a blower with about 12' of stove pipe to the center of the pile and they burn quite well

 

[Greenpole bandit]

I am going back this weekend and will take some pictures

 

[bigsnowdog]

Great, thank you!

 

[RonMar]

My experience in burning green conifers is that you have to delimb them, otherwise you can't make a dense enough pile to get hot enough to burn. It's like stacking up green, fire resistant, tumbleweeds.

Yep, you have to get them to fall together close so the moisture can cook out so they will combust. Piling them over a dry pile? well i have been more dissappointed than not by this process. Unless the dry portion contains enough fuel to dry out the wet material, and unless, and this is the biggest part, the green material is packed tight enough to hold the heat in and dry out the green wood, it just dosn't work well. the dry stuff burns away leaving you with a twisted mess of charred still green wood to deal with... Building a hot core fire, then adding the green wood to it as it can take it and break it down has worked the best for me. A better way to do this is to build a burn trough. Basically a large "U" shaped channel kind of flared at the top with low end plates and a flip top. There are 2 holes at the bottom of the end plates where you blow in air, and openings near he top to allow gas to exit You get a hot core fire burning in this and then you lay your logs into the trough. With the lid flipped closed, this concentrates the heat and breaks down the green wood, even loosely spaced. As it dries and breaks down, it settles to the bottom and joins the core fire to provide heat to breakdown the freshly added fuel on top. I have done this with great success by pushing old stumps together to form the trough. the material in the middle is consumed quicker as the heat is concentrated by the stumps. The heat also dries out the stumps to the point that they will then burn.

You will need forced air, but I would NOT reccomend a leaf blower just for the fact that I would not want to work around a droning leaf blower all day long. I would either source a 4 stroke blower that can run at reduced RPM, or fab up something electric. It does not take much air if delivered to the core of the fire. I regularly use a burn pile blower that I built using a 4" 12VDC computer fan and some 4" metal ducting. It runs about 20 hours on a fully charged gel-cell, and you can't even hear it run. The pipe runs in and feeds an insanely hot core fire onto which I pile other material. The piling of fresh material insulates and further superheats the core which more quickly dries and breaks down the piled material. An enclosed burner such as the trough would further speed the process

Anyway you look at it, burning will be time consuming, but the trough will reguire very little fuel to get started and maintain combustion. If you build it right, you will be able to drive up to it with a loader full of cut pieces, flip the top open with the bucket and dump the load into the top, then close the top down on the fresh load to start cooking down.

All in all, way easier if you can find someone who can take the logs for pulp/chip a self loading log truck at a time. Then a small chipper would make fairly quick work of the limbs. Fair warning, if you havn't run a large chipper before, my 6" 30HP will keep 2 men and a boy RUNNING to keep it fed. It seems a little urgent when running it as any time it is droning away not making chips, it is burning fuel... Also loose stacked piles are better than large dense piles as it gets time consuming pulling out branches to get them lined up to feed into the chipper. Burning is way more relaxed. Gather a pile in the loader and go add it to the burn pile, repeate... A grappled fork buck really helps here

Good Luck.

 

[bigsnowdog]

Yep, you have to get them to fall together close so the moisture can cook out so they will combust. Piling them over a dry pile? well i have been more dissappointed than not by this process. Unless the dry portion contains enough fuel to dry out the wet material, and unless, and this is the biggest part, the green material is packed tight enough to hold the heat in and dry out the green wood, it just dosn't work well. the dry stuff burns away leaving you with a twisted mess of charred still green wood to deal with... Building a hot core fire, then adding the green wood to it as it can take it and break it down has worked the best for me. A better way to do this is to build a burn trough. Basically a large "U" shaped channel kind of flared at the top with low end plates and a flip top. There are 2 holes at the bottom of the end plates where you blow in air, and openings near he top to allow gas to exit You get a hot core fire burning in this and then you lay your logs into the trough. With the lid flipped closed, this concentrates the heat and breaks down the green wood, even loosely spaced. As it dries and breaks down, it settles to the bottom and joins the core fire to provide heat to breakdown the freshly added fuel on top. I have done this with great success by pushing old stumps together to form the trough. the material in the middle is consumed quicker as the heat is concentrated by the stumps. The heat also dries out the stumps to the point that they will then burn.

You will need forced air, but I would NOT reccomend a leaf blower just for the fact that I would not want to work around a droning leaf blower all day long. I would either source a 4 stroke blower that can run at reduced RPM, or fab up something electric. It does not take much air if delivered to the core of the fire. I regularly use a burn pile blower that I built using a 4" 12VDC computer fan and some 4" metal ducting. It runs about 20 hours on a fully charged gel-cell, and you can't even hear it run. The pipe runs in and feeds an insanely hot core fire onto which I pile other material. The piling of fresh material insulates and further superheats the core which more quickly dries and breaks down the piled material. An enclosed burner such as the trough would further speed the process

Anyway you look at it, burning will be time consuming, but the trough will reguire very little fuel to get started and maintain combustion. If you build it right, you will be able to drive up to it with a loader full of cut pieces, flip the top open with the bucket and dump the load into the top, then close the top down on the fresh load to start cooking down.

All in all, way easier if you can find someone who can take the logs for pulp/chip a self loading log truck at a time. Then a small chipper would make fairly quick work of the limbs. Fair warning, if you havn't run a large chipper before, my 6" 30HP will keep 2 men and a boy RUNNING to keep it fed. It seems a little urgent when running it as any time it is droning away not making chips, it is burning fuel... Also loose stacked piles are better than large dense piles as it gets time consuming pulling out branches to get them lined up to feed into the chipper. Burning is way more relaxed. Gather a pile in the loader and go add it to the burn pile, repeate... A grappled fork buck really helps here

Good Luck.

You say you make this out of stumps, but then you talk about taking the top off and putting it back on again. What is the top?

Interesting that such a small fan would work.

 

[LeadPoison]

I can second the advice of a leaf lower to get a fire going... It is nothing short of amazing.

 

[RonMar]

You say you make this out of stumps, but then you talk about taking the top off and putting it back on again. What is the top?.

I had the stumps to cook down, along with a bunch of other stuff. With the stumps, I had a piece of steel plate that I could drag on and off. Something on top is the key as it slows the escape of the heat and concentrates it between the sides of the trough. The plate was a hassle, as it was just setting there and had to be repossitioned a lot. If it was hinged so it could just be flopped open and closed, it would be much easier to work with. If I was making one specifically to burn logs, I would make it out of steel, perhaps an old oval fuel oil tank with the top cut off, and large "V" notches cut down the sides to allow the logs to rest in it. I would cut the logs just slightly longer than the trough so they cannot immediatly fall to the bottom, but instead have to hang in the heat and burn thru. Once they burn thru they will fall the rest of the way down and provide dry fuel for the core fire. Another way, since the OP has a bunch of logs, would be to make frames to hold the stacked logs in piles end to end with a gap in the middle to form the trough. As the logs put in for fuel dried out the logs forming the trough, the ends of the logs could be pushed in to keep the trough shape This would use the material he has a lot of, consume the material, and dry out the logs used for the trough so they will burn easilly in a conventional fire after all the others are gone.

Attached a pic to show what I am talking about. on the left is how I would convert an old fuel oil tank, and on the right, stacked logs forming the trough, with ones piled on each end to form the supports for the ones being burnt. The top of the log built burner would be more difficult to deal with, but would require only the top metal plate...

Interesting that such a small fan would work.

Put in the right place, it takes very little air to get a fire really cooking. Take a long piece of pipe, stick it down near the coals at the center of a fire and blow and you will see what I mean. Now imagine a steady stream of air applied at that point. When I say hot, I am talking too hot to approach the pile to add fresh fuel without getting radiant heat burns... That little bit of air is also the difference between a wet smoky "neighbor complaining about the smoke" fire and a clean fire with almost no smoke... A section of rigid steel dryer duct pipe from the home improvement store, and a 12V computer fan from radioshack and some small angle brackets to attach the fan to the duct. Apply a 12V power source and work the nozzle end down toward the coals and away she goes. It gets so hot that the end of the duct starts to break down from the heat and you loose a little length with each fire. I thought about building a larger one with a car heater blower, but the little one works so well, I have yet to have the need for more air. If I built a large trough, I would use 2 of these, or make the larger one to feed air into both ends, and perhaps into the middle.