Need Advice on 6,000 Acres and 150 Miles of Piles to clear

[Eric H]

You need a tub, but if your going to buy a mulcher, look at bron, fecon, or maybe a gyro trac ... 600 hp and up, but still even with those machines thats a bunch of work..... 148 is a great machine, but you need bigger

 

[jaotguy]

talk to the lumber mills , (or any other company that uses wood on a large scale) they may cut out the usable lengths and leave the stumps / tops and give you something for it ... then there is only the remaining bit to grind .... let the locals have it for fire wood ....

for legal reasons , you may have to haul the remaining bits to a clearing area for them to "pick up" .

 

[texasjohn]

Years ago I spent 2 years in Honduras...my dad was stationed there. Visited Nicaragua then. Have vacationed in Honduras, Costa Erica, Belize, Mexico in recent years.

Thank you texasjohn, I am sure there are more than a few mulching experts here. What where you doing down here?

 

[yellowdogsvc]

Welcome to the forums..

You have a massive job if you are looking at recycling. That job is similar to a pipeline job in length except that the trees were piled up tight (I assume) with a dozer, roots and all. Even with a tub grinder, you it would take a long time. Looking at the pictures, though, I don't see how anything but a tracked machine could attempt to cross those fields. IF and it's a big if, you can get something as heavy as a tub or horizontal grinder in there, you have a lot of dirt and stumps to deal with.

I personally wouldn't know where to begin other than at one end and work my way down the rows. Estimating time is a real challenge for anyone but a large right of way contractor and since the trees were already pushed up with what looks like a lot of dirt, it makes it hard to estimate the grinding. Again, if you were going to take on a project like this, an excavators feeding a horizontal grinders would be my choice. Just the fuel use alone creates logistics challenges that get tougher depending on how rural your site is. Support equipment such as trucks, fuel trucks, repair trucks etc., may get mired in that soft ground during the rainy season.

 

[ShearHeadMS]

Man, those piles are gona be killer!! My opinion on what to do is to start at one end and go about 100 yards and turn the pile back into itself, just make a big round pile out of it and leave it, do the same as you go, so then you have designated piles to work on, to me it's easier to do piles over traveling down windrows. 2nd opinion, dig a trench along the windrows and bury it good, seems kinda crazy but since you can't burn what other option do you have? And on the other clearing I would get my hands on the biggest cats, JD, allis, and kamotsu I could and get a huge anchor chain and drag it all down. May take some time but it beats trying to stump and rake everything. The last 200 acres I did with A drum chopper did very well With the cattle, they seem to have a nack of keeping things stomped down. Grinding and mulching seems like it may cost you more than what you could make off cattle in 20 years, plus the cost of teeth, wear and tear is going to cost more than a few cats with modified orops and a large chain. I would also suggest you look at how them boys in Aussie do it!

 

[CliffordK]

Letting it rot down from large piles could take decades.

Chipping, or pulling out valuable wood for lumber, then chipping the rest is probably the best option.

Surely there are power plants that run on hog fuel. Paper? Or, the chips would help with soil improvement.

 

[mulching consultant]

Your idea of the Fecon machine is by far the fastest and least expensive way to approach the project. A tub grinder will do the work too but then you need more machines and operators and the fuel costs will add up much more quickly. The Fecon FTX148 will do the job. It is just a matter of time. If more productivity than a FTX148 can produce is needed, then I would consider a larger machine like a Fecon FTX400 or FTX600. Obviously that comes with higher costs.
For the 6000 acres yet to clear the Fecon machine will also do it more effectively than creating the piles like you have been doing and the carbide teeth will let you engage the ground.
The FTX400 and FTX600 also have a milling head option so they could not only clear the above ground vegetation but could get rid of the stumps too and have the land ready for your purpose with a single machine.
I am familiar with a company in Argentina who has cleared miles and miles of piles very similar to the ones in your pictures with an FTX600. However, their purpose is a bit different. They are clearing land to establish grass land for cattle. I can probably put you in touch with them if you wanted their opinion. Again, the piles are very similar and they have cleared not piled land too.

 

[Robbie Hegwood]

They are cooking with gas in the last several post. With the piles being in a long row and not at one site that moves away from a tug grinder and back toward a mulcher. You mentioned excavators and possible mulchers for them. Use the money from those and put toward a larger mulcher or a second. Use the excavators to lay out the material for the mulcher and that will increase your productivity the most. Also have the excavators seperate the dirt from the wood as much as possible. Now within the mulching option you have two options. One high HP machine like the 400 or 600 listed, the 600 is sweet. Or 2 medium machines. Something not mentioned here is ALL machines will break down. As they do on pipeline projects they have multiple machines, even WHEN one goes down the other machine is still producing. You will have a set production rate per machine based on HP. The length of your project will then be determined by the number of machines. Now, within the 2 machine option, say 2 400's. You can equip one with carbides for more course (dirt) work and one with Fecon's new chipper teeth for higher production on whole trees and cleaner material. Stick with Mulching Consultant, great support both with dealer network and direct.

 

[yellowdogsvc]

I wouldn't touch this job with anything under 300 hp in a mulcher and that would still be a tall order. The army just cleared 1000 acres near me and the contract was somewhere around 1.2 million for mulching cedar. It was awarded to multiple contractors and completed in several months but not everything was mulched. A few years back, the Toyota plant near San Antonio, Texas used dozers to clear the land for a new factory. The trees were a bit bigger than the ones mentioned in the first post. The trees were pushed into piles and a tracked horizontal grinder with remote was fed by an excavator. It think two excavators and two grinders were used for the recycling. The acreage, though, was only 2000 acres total and I think only 600 acres were dozed but I could be wrong. I can't remember how long it took but there may be an archived article on the net or on Vermeer's site.

It wasn't swampy and machine support was only a few miles away.

 

[Egon]

With 150 miles of piled tree debris the economics may suggest leaving it in place.

Preplanning?