Taking down some trees for land clearing - how high should I leave stumps for easier removal?

[jyoutz]

I have no problems just leaving the stumps. There are no trees in my yard. They are all out on the acreage. I tried digging out one pine stump. It was about 35 years ago. I was young.....and stupid. After three days of digging - I burned it. On my 80 - Mother Nature takes care of any stumps.

Yeah I think removal is only if there’s a need for agricultural or landscaping use of the land.

 

[ovrszd]

An excavator of equal weight would be a lot better at removing stumps than a dozer.

Absolutely. If renting or hiring, go Excavator every time. Only condition a dozer would be better is if you needed to do landscaping after removing the stumps.

 

[ddbackhoe]

See my earlier comment about the risks of doing that. Maybe for small trees.

EVERYTHING humans do have inherent risks. Hunting, fishing, driving, walking, gardening, land clearing, felling trees, burning brush, firewood processing, tractoring, equipment repair, mowing the lawn, etc. etc.
Assessing the risk and minimizing the possible damage is the difficult part.

This project can be done with a dozer, excavator, pick axe and shovel, team of horses/oxen, etc. Where to invest time and money is the question.

Call out a couple of excavation contractors and get a couple estimates on what you want done. What are the total equipment rental rates + damage waiver + liability insurance + delivery + fuel (homeowners typically get 8 hours/day, 40 hours/week period. one hour over = extra day)+ learning curve + risk.

No clue what the average rate is in your area, but locally runs $4-4500 per acre (43000 sq.ft.) and will be done.

Fire watch, 4 acre clear cut

 

[jyoutz]

EVERYTHING humans do have inherent risks. Hunting, fishing, driving, walking, gardening, land clearing, felling trees, burning brush, firewood processing, tractoring, equipment repair, mowing the lawn, etc. etc.
Assessing the risk and minimizing the possible damage is the difficult part.

This project can be done with a dozer, excavator, pick axe and shovel, team of horses/oxen, etc. Where to invest time and money is the question.

Call out a couple of excavation contractors and get a couple estimates on what you want done. What are the total equipment rental rates + damage waiver + liability insurance + delivery + fuel (homeowners typically get 8 hours/day, 40 hours/week period. one hour over = extra day)+ learning curve + risk.

No clue what the average rate is in your area, but locally runs $4-4500 per acre (43000 sq.ft.) and will be done.

Loggers hate cutting large blown down trees with root balls because of the hazards. And they are the most skilled cutters. I think they know a few things about this. Small trees with small root balls, are probably less of a hazard.

 

[EddieWalker]

A dozer is probably the worse machine that you can use to remove stumps and trees. They can do it, but they are slow, and they create a huge mess compared to an excavator or backhoe. They are also pretty much useless at getting debris to the burn pile. Even with a rake, you end up pushing a massive amount of dirt to your burn pile.

Nothing is faster or more efficient at removing trees and stumps then an excavator. The bigger the machine, the faster it is. A backhoe works to, but it's slower then an excavator. I like the backhoe because I can pick up the debris and carry them to the burn pile with my grapple. Tires are a lot faster then tracks when moving material. I can also take off the grapple and put on my bucket to bring dirt to fill in the hole, compact it with my tires, and back drag it with the bucket to smooth it out so you will never know there was ever a tree there.

If you are cutting down the trees and then removing the stumps, you will save yourself a lot of time and effort by taking the entire tree out with what you are going to use to remove the stumps. A full tree comes out easy, a stump is always a lot of work. For me, pines take the most effort to get out. They have a tap root that is deeper then most trees, and you have to remove more material around the tree to get them to fall over. Without the weight and leverage of the tree to help get the root ball out, you have to dig an even bigger hole to get that stump out. I can dig out and lay down a 24 inch pine in 20 t0 30 minutes depending on my access to the tree with my backhoe. Then I cut off the root ball with my chainsaw, cut the pine into lengths that I can pick up and carry to where I want it. Digging out a stump of a similar sized pine will take at least an hour, and if access is bad, or it's really stuck in there, it can take even longer. Biggest issue with digging out stumps is that smaller stumps can be just as time consuming to get out as bigger ones.

In my opinion, you never want to leave a stump in the ground if you want to clear the land. You are creating a lot more work for yourself. If you are going to rent or hire something to take out the stump, do it for the entire tree and get it done in a fraction of the time.

 

[ovrszd]

Loggers hate cutting large blown down trees with root balls because of the hazards. And they are the most skilled cutters. I think they know a few things about this. Small trees with small root balls, are probably less of a hazard.

Loggers hate doing that because of pinching hazards when sawing. Loggers have no consideration for collateral damage when falling standing trees. Much quicker and easier for them to do it standing. Then the land owner is left with the damage and debris.

 

[Jstpssng]

I have several goals here:

-logs for my sawmill
-firewood
-plantable areas for personal food consumption
-open land for family recreation (I need to be able to get the tractor to where I can brush hog all the thorny grabby bleedy stuff and then plow the roots out)

I will be doing this in stages, starting with the easiest, most accessible, least thorny part, approximately 100’x300’ irregular shaped area, that has about 30 or so trees to come down, most in the 10”-20” range (not counting stuff under 4”).

If you have time letting the stumps rot for a year or two will help them to come out better. Are they hardwood or softwood?

In 2009 I had a 2 acre field reclaimed. First they cut and chipped everything;
then came in with a 20 ton excavator and pulled the stumps, creating 11 stump piles so that I could reclaim the topsoil. It took 2 days to do two acres. The stumps weren't as big as what you have, but there probably were more of them. He also did a good job of raking the rocks out and getting them out of the field.

 

[jyoutz]

Loggers hate doing that because of pinching hazards when sawing. Loggers have no consideration for collateral damage when falling standing trees. Much quicker and easier for them to do it standing. Then the land owner is left with the damage and debris.

Good fallers will put the tree exactly where they plan to and not leave residual stand damage (because they pay a penalty under the contract). And it’s more than just pinching the bar. The fatality I referred to is when the huge root balls spring back under tension. On most of the timber sales I’ve worked on, the old style logging was chainsaw felling and bucking. Then the slash is piled with a small dozer with a brush rake. A clean operation. Now, most loggers use mechanized feller/bunchers and they snip the tree at the butt and carry a bunch of whole trees to the landing, where the tops are mechanically cut and piled. But very large timber is still hand felled and treated as I described under the old system. The large trees are still skidded either with a rear grapple skidder or cable choker skidder. Lack of a good contract, or poor contract administration is what results in the messes that you described.

 

[ovrszd]

Good fallers will put the tree exactly where they plan to and not leave residual stand damage (because they pay a penalty under the contract). And it’s more than just pinching the bar. The fatality I referred to is when the huge root balls spring back under tension. On most of the timber sales I’ve worked on, the old style logging was chainsaw felling and bucking. Then the slash is piled with a small dozer with a brush rake. A clean operation. Now, most loggers use mechanized feller/bunchers and they snip the tree at the butt and carry a bunch of whole trees to the landing, where the tops are mechanically cut and piled. But very large timber is still hand felled and treated as I described under the old system. The large trees are still skidded either with a rear grapple skidder or cable choker skidder. Lack of a good contract, or poor contract administration is what results in the messes that you described.

How do you fall a large tree such as an oak in a timber full of trees without collateral damage? Around here logging is done in small areas. Clear large oak or walnut from a mixed timber for example. It always leaves a mess. No way around it.

 

[KilroyJC]

If you have time letting the stumps rot for a year or two will help them to come out better. Are they hardwood or softwood?

In 2009 I had a 2 acre field reclaimed. First they cut and chipped everything; View attachment 780133
then came in with a 20 ton excavator and pulled the stumps, creating 11 stump piles so that I could reclaim the topsoil. It took 2 days to do two acres. The stumps weren't as big as what you have, but there probably were more of them. He also did a good job of raking the rocks out and getting them out of the field.

Mixed: loblolly pine/poplar/black walnut predominate, a couple other odds-n-ends mixed in