Grass Stirp 100 x 1800

[Obed]

We moved into the house we built in January. We cleared a 900 ft driveway through the woods and cleared areas for house and garden. The property had not been logged in at least 70 years. The excavation contractor pushed the trees over with his track loader/dozer. The stumps were cut off of the trees after the trees were on the ground.

I would strongly recommend that you push the trees over while they are attached to the trees. That's the easiest way to get the stumps out of the ground and probably the least expensive. I personally would not recommend the stump grinding approach for the reasons other people have mentioned.

I have a 28 HP tractor with a backhoe. Using the backhoe, I can knock down trees up to about 12" in diameter. Larger trees would make me nervous. I would be very nervous about knocking down 2 or 3 foot trees with any tractor. I don't see a tractor as being the best tool for clearing your strip if you have many 2+ foot trees. I would probably hire our the job and then use the tractor for cleaning up the property and prepping it for seeding with grass.

Obed

 

[tommu56]

I'm in the push the over camp too!

when i cleared land for my cabin I did the excavator a favor by cutting the trees off and leaving a 4' stump.
When he got there to clear the lot he said next time leav the tree on there and he will pile them were I want them.
The few I had left standing he made 3 swipes with his dozer blade and pushed them over in no time the ones I "helped" him with took at least twice as long because he didn't have the weight and leverage of the tree to help.

When I had my field cleared I just marked the edge's and showed him were I wanted them.
It saved me a lot of back braking work cutting and moving the logs too.
I just cut 15-20 ft pieces out of the pile carry them over with the loader bucket to the splitter area cut them while on the bucket at waist height and then split and stack only handeling the rounds once on to the splitter.

tom

 

[Redneck in training]

I want to build a private grass strip at my place, 100 x 1800.
I will have to remove trees, remove the stumps, smooth it out, possibly fill in some low level areas. 1300 feet has trees, the other is just a field.
I will have the trees cut by a lumber company. I assume they will not clean up the area very well.

I have a small Kubota tractor L2800.

Questions/Issues:
What is the best way to dig up or remove the stumps? The trees in general are not very big, probably 2-3 feet diameter at the most.
Should I rent a dozer?
Is there anything I can purchase for my small tractor to do the job?
If my small tractor will not do the job if I had a slightly larger tractor could I do the job? If it is more economical than renting I could trade in my tractor for something larger.

Any other advice or recommendations would be appreciated.

Experienced bulldozer operator will be done with the tree removal in one day. Then you will spend few days pulling and chpping off roots with your tractor.
I had trees removed from about 30 sparsely treed acres. Guy with D6 CAT was done with it in about 10 hours including fixing some erroded places. Paid about 1200$.

 

[Diamondpilot]

As you know as a pilot you want the strip to be as smooth as possible with no soft spots. If it were me I would hire a dozer to do the big work.

Chris

 

[pilot-werx]

Just did this on my 40 acres so I could get my turbine beaver in and out on amphibs.... The long and the short is that I was able to work a deal with a logging company that they could have the wood if the pulled the stumps, ground them, then placed the chips as erosion control. I then had a site contractor come in with a root rake on his dozer to get all the roots and big rocks out. With everything gone I worked for days on my 110TLb to get the strip smooth using the bucket and an old trail drag. Then I ended up trading an annual on a 206 for the reclaim asphalt that I used to cover the strip and the roller to compact it. As a caution, check with local environmental folks and get their blessing first.