75hp or 85hp Backhoe or 9 ton Excavator

[RedNeckRacin]

Don't even bother planning on burning them, you are just going to end up with a frustrating mess to clean up once the machine leaves. There is no way to get them clean enough. Also, if you dig a hole to bury them, be aware that they may rot and leave a hole or they may be preserved and take decades to go away. I had some stumps at the edge of my yard that I dug up this year that were cut around 20 years ago now. There were two that were as strong as the day the were cut. Even with a 7 ton mini they gave me fits and I'm not an amateur operator. I ended up pulling the 24" stump out after 45 min and a hole much larger than I really wanted. Even after raking the root ball for several minutes I had to get creative and use the blade and the bucket to pick up the stump to transport it back in the woods. I just stack some brush on it and chalk it up as rabbit habit. As was mentioned use the hydraulics to your advantage and skip any pulling the stump out ideas. You can't pull out a stump of much size with brute force and a chain. Th e mini will easily out dig the backhoe BUT if you have to move spoils or brush, the backhoe will trounce a mini handily.

 

[IslandTractor]

I agree that buried stumps will eventually rot but that isn't necessarily a problem if you plan where the stump graveyard will be. Certainly don't want the burial out to be under your yard or in a pasture with horses but it won't be an issue in a remote corner of the property. Indeed, it would be ideal to put it where you will pile brush to rot in the future. I buried about a dozen stumps about eight years ago and threw some grass seed over it after backfilling. Today there is no depression, no hint of what is below the turf.

A TLB with grapple or 4n1 would be the single best tool IMO to dig out small (12" and below) stumps, carry them to a burial area, dig a pit, push them in and cover. I did it with a small CUT TLB but it would go much much faster with a full size commercial TLB.

 

[TractorGuy]

I recently had 5 acres clear cut. The timber folks were supposed to rake it all into piles one man could burn. When they finished I had 3 monster piles and limbs left everywhere. Part of the reason for the large piles were they didn't want any of the live oaks which I knew going in so they just cut them and piled them up. They offered to rake it and burn it for me for a thousand bucks which would have been a deal but didn't include any stump removal. The first person to provide an estimate warned me not to burn the piles if I was going to stump it. He said the wood was free fuel to burn the stumps with. SOOOOO I told the timber folks not to rake and burn it.

Estimates to dig out the stumps, rake and burn ran from a low of $10,000 for the 5 acres to a high of $4,500 per acre. It was unclear on how the land would look with the $10,000 estimate but the guy that offered it told me I needed a bigger tractor than my JD855 to clean up and level behind him. The 4,500 per acre estimate was finish graded.

I rented an E32 (7,000 lb) Bobcat excavator with a thumb to try for a weekend and it left much to be desired. It made short work of smaller stumps but I encountered two it wouldn't budge after I dug a 3-4 ft trench around them and popped all the feeder roots. After that I just drove around similar stumps not wanting to waste machine hours on something I didn't think it would remove. You could make better time with an excavator than a backhoe I think but you would need at least a 15,000 lb unit with a thumb and grader blade.

At the end of the day I had cleaned up a 1/4 acre section on my home lot but hadn't put a dent in the 5 acre section and ended up with a huge trench around a sweetgum in my front yard.

I tossed my options around and decided to go shopping fr a backhoe. Just bought a 80HP New Holland 575E that is supposed to be in good condition so I'm waiting for that to get here from AR. If I'm lucky I can clean up the 5 acres and still have a machine that's worth what I paid for it.

One thing I can suggest is when you start digging scrape the top soil off to the side before digging the stump out and put it back on top after filling the holes.

 

[EddieWalker]

9 tonne excavator is too small to be of much use. A full sized backhoe is OK, but not what I'd choose. It's too slow, under powered and awkward to position. While it will get the job done, you will waste a lot of time learning how, and even when you get the hang of it, you will still be spending too much time re-positioning yourself.

Ideally you want a 20 tonne excavator. You might find that the rental yards have 12 to 16 tonne machines. Go with the biggest you can find. For bigger, you will either have to hire it out, or try some of the dealers.

Small machines just struggle too much on stumps. When you have enough power to just pluck them out, you will knock it out so much faster that in the end, it usually costs the same, but you are done in a fraction of the time.

Stumps are definitely more effort to burn, but not impossible. If you can stack them and wait a year, they will burn easier. Especially if the rains wash them off. But if you can get a decent burn pile going with other debris, just put the stumps on top of the pile and punch it up every couple of hours. I've had burn piles go for weeks at a time. Just punch it up in the morning to waken up the coals, then keep piling new material on it.

 

[TractorGuy]

Rereading your original post I think either machine would do the job. BUT any track machine will tear the ground up something fierce. A backhoe would probably do less damage than an excavator but will get less done per hour. Remember rentals only allow 40 hours of use per week.

You might try one on a daily rate to get an idea how much it will or won't do.

 

[Ralph Copp]

About 6 years ago I bought an old John Deere 510B backhoe to use on my property for hauling shale, topsoil, digging out stumps, ditching, septic tanks, putting in culverts, etc... They are probably the most useful toy you can get if you have lots of work to do. Actually, one of the first jobs I had to do was dig a grave for my neighbours horse. That was the first time I realized that after digging the large grave and putting a horse in it, there still wasn't any soil left over. You can really compact the soil. I dig up allot of stumps and always bury them in the same hole they come out of. I will say that most of them are fir trees that don't have a large root system but are still large. An excavator can do the same thing. A backhoe is smaller if you don't have the room to get around. It would probably be more cost effective to have someone come in and do the job for you. But you would also have fun playing with a rental.

 

[viziers]

Well a neighbor of mine has a nice side dozer and and said he is thinking of a way to help me out using it to get rid of the stumps and maybe charging me roughly 50 an hour or maybe doing a barter type thing to help him with some of his projects around his farm...

This all came about because I drive by his house an noticed he had an outdoor wood furnace and stopped by when I saw him outside and asked him if he wanted the wood as I was just going to burn it in a pile and felt it was wasted that way and figured at least someone could get some use out of it and so I have been hauling all sorts of log debri to his farm (enough wood to heat his home for a couple winters)..

When I offered the wood to him I wasn't looking for anything in return just trying to help someone out.

vizi

 

[Carl_NH]

Well a neighbor of mine has a nice side dozer and and said he is thinking of a way to help me out using it to get rid of the stumps and maybe charging me roughly 50 an hour or maybe doing a barter type thing to help him with some of his projects around his farm...

This all came about because I drive by his house an noticed he had an outdoor wood furnace and stopped by when I saw him outside and asked him if he wanted the wood as I was just going to burn it in a pile and felt it was wasted that way and figured at least someone could get some use out of it and so I have been hauling all sorts of log debri to his farm (enough wood to heat his home for a couple winters)..

When I offered the wood to him I wasn't looking for anything in return just trying to help someone out.

vizi

Sounds like a good deal all around - I would probably have him come over and do a few hours of stumping to see if its going to yield the results you want, then you can see how much he can do with his machine. Also get a sense if his dozer can get the bigger stumps out too.

 

[Rustyiron]

Hydraulic thumb would be great but not sure how available that will be on a rental.
vizi

^^^ This would IMO, have a lot to do with what machine you get. An experienced operator can manipulate a stump around to grab the stumps in the bucket (no thumb) quickly. Not so quick with a rookie. Even a fixed thumb would be prefered. Have your neighbor over for a day with his dozer and see how it works out.
It might work well to pop or loosen the stumps with a hoe, leave in place (loosened) and then have the dozer push them up into several piles. The dryer the ground, the cleaner the stump will come out and shed more of the soil attached to it for burning.

 

[WoodChuckDad]

I have a contract on a 30k lb Ex with Hydraulic thumb. Since I will be taking lots and lots of pictures, you guys get to see if it is a bad idea or good idea. I'm getting about 20 acres of mixed hardwood/softwood clear cut. And then I am pulling stumps. I won't be burning all the stumps right away. I am using the biggest to make a stump fence. I am putting in a tall fence along the border of the property and using the larger stumps to dissuade the wildlife from eating my trees. And as I expand my orchard, I will move the stump fence to accommodate it.