Wood chipper

[765489]

Was wondering has anyone have any recommendations on a PTO driven wood chipper. I got this one listed on donedeal for 1300 euros including vat and delivery. Positive or negative comments welcome.

Would be only used for small diameter branches, anything over 5cms, I'll cut up for the fire.

https://www.clontrac.ie/product-page/r60

[765489]

Actually looking at that model I think it's a branch logger, this would be the cheapest they'd have.

https://www.clontrac.ie/product-page/remet-rt-630

[CelticRambler]

1300€

I know you're paying for the PTO and serious usage ... but for a max diameter of 50mm when a Lidl shredder can cope with 45mm for 80€ ??? Seems like you're not getting much for the extra 1200€

Not sure what typical prices are in Ireland, but for that money here, I'd be expecting a fully autonomous machine that could cope with branches up to 10cm.

[765489]

1300€

I know you're paying for the PTO and serious usage ... but for a max diameter of 50mm when a Lidl shredder can cope with 45mm for 80€ ??? Seems like you're not getting much for the extra 1200€

Not sure what typical prices are in Ireland, but for that money here, I'd be expecting a fully autonomous machine that could cope with branches up to 10cm.

Sorry CR it's the second model 1900 euros

I'd have a pile about 40 foot by 20 foot be about 10 foot high. I want to have it in a way of mulching around trees and the like rather than burn it, which is what I used to do.

[490808]

...when a Lidl shredder can cope with 45mm for 80€ ??? .

Says the man that wants to buy a saw mill

There really is no comparison between a domestic shredder and a commercial chipper.

I use this one



does a great job at chipping and will do 45mm all day long and I can produce 2-3 cu meters of chippings in a days work.

Only recommendation I have for the OP is to make sure they can get a spare set of blades easily and to keep dirty wood out. Ripped up suckers with a bit of soil on them will ruin the cutters. Keep hedge clippings out they get stuck in smaller shedders and often have swept up stones with them which will totally ruin the cutters.

[765489]

What's the model of that one Continental ?

[490808]

https://hyundaipowerequipment.co.uk/hyu ... -shredder/

For your use I'd go for a bigger one.

The company is just up the road from Pembroke Dock in Wales so if you know anyone coming back on the ferry with a van they could pick one up. There is a company in Ireland that sells them but the price difference is at the usual rip off ireland level.

[490808]

If you are ever near Dungarvan then I can give you a demonstration.

Wood needs to be very straight with that size of chipper due to the chute size.

[765489]

I was looking at a YouTube video of it Continental thanks. As you say the chute looks a bit small for what I'd be putting in it. I've alot of black thorn and hawthorn that would be going into it. But I will now check the dimensions of the PTO one so thanks for that tip.

I'm leaning towards the PTO one as I can just drive along in the tractor rather than having to drag them all to a point, which is always another pain in the eyeballs.

I'll report back on what I get. The extra 600 euros means I won't be looking at it for another few weeks !

[490808]

Blackthorn is a total pain, hire a digger and bury it

You'll need to be very careful if your brash pile has been there a long time. The branches on the ground will be muddy and that messes up the blades.

If you can keep the blades really sharp, I hone mine fairly regularly on a cheap diamond honing block (Lidl ) you really notice the difference with sharp cutters. There's no issue with cutter balance provided you give each the same treatment. Taking out the anvil the cutters cut against and keeping the edges true also pays dividends, that is another spare that is worth checking is available.

(LOL spelling checker wanted to change I hone mine to Iphone mini)

[CelticRambler]

Says the man that wants to buy a saw mill

There really is no comparison between a domestic shredder and a commercial chipper.

The sawmill place is selling a commercial PTO chipper (diam 80mm) for 1290€ ...

I'd have a pile about 40 foot by 20 foot be about 10 foot high. I want to have it in a way of mulching around trees and the like rather than burn it, which is what I used to do.

What're foots?

Converting that to real money, that's about the volume that my summer volunteers chipped for me last year - a mix of blackthorn, hawthorn, willow, oak, acacia and miscellaneous others. Three days with the Lidl chipper, which went on to do about the same amount three more times in the year.

[CelticRambler]

An afterthought on the chipping vs. burning equation: there is a third way of disposing of this material - building berms. I've been doing that this year (added another 10x2x1m today) as part of my water-retaining landscaping (modified Hügelkultur system).

Now while that might not be anything you'd want to do, my tree-felling neighbour has been clearing everything vaguely resembling a tree or a shrub from his land these last few months. I've been puzzled as to where he's been taking all the material - he drives it past me three or four times a day - but finally discovered that he's jamming it into an area of woodland just down the lane, creating almost exactly the same kind of berms that I've been building (without the soil/grass) around the perimeter of the woodland. Haven't had a chance to ask him what his motivation is, but it's possibly a combination of not being allowed burn it and giving our local deer a safe refuge from the hunters.

[490808]

^^^^^

Think he already has a berm its 12.192 x 6.096 x 3.048 meters and wants to deberm.

[765489]

I've seen a couple of people create "berms" locally out of hedgerows around here CR. I won't comment any further on that. Probably the same thing your neighbour is up to.

Will be going with a PTO wood chipper. May as well make use of the tractor. It's something that will be always useful to have around and will mean I can reuse the chippings as a mulch after 12 months. Also will save my back from dragging all this stuff hundreds of meters as it will be mobile

1900 including delivery vat and PTO shaft.

https://www.clontrac.ie/product-page/remet-rt-630

[CelticRambler]

Grand so!

There's actually a very healthy market here for rubbishy trees and branches, since pellet and wood-chip boilers got installed left, right and centre on the back of eco-grants a few years back. It's driven up the price of (fire) wood quite considerably, because previously the loggers only wanted nice straight, easy-to-split trunks and decent-sized branches (which is how I came to acquire two dozen wonky trees). Now, they'll take anything because the whole lot gets chipped.

None of this worrying about piddly little 4cm diameters either! At work a few years ago, an almighty commotion started up on the waste ground beside us. One of these had rocked up that morning, and spent the whole day turning a line of venerable old trees into chips:



Having had personal experience of lifting and shifting and cutting and shredding logs and branches of all sizes, it was quite mesmerising to watch the operator load 80cm wide trunks onto the rack, and see them disappear into the machine with no resistance at all ...

Then a deathly silence broke out at the end of the day: their supervisor turned up ... and told them they'd knocked and chipped the wrong trees.

[490808]

No supprise there about chipping the wrong trees. I had to take down old trees when a housing estate was started in the wrong place and they ran out of room at one side of the site.

btw how do they dry the chips?

[765489]

I'd say that machine is around the 400 - 500 k mark to buy new.

[CelticRambler]

btw how do they dry the chips?

I think it's currently a two-stage process - one business that just makes woodchips; then another that turns them into burnable fuel. There's a field near me that used to be a small paddock of dead vehicles. Then the eco-grant came on the scene, yerman expanded his paddock to about three times the size, got rid of all the scrap metal and now it's filled with trees of various description and massive piles of wood chips. Some of them must be about 10m high. I'd see something similar in various places on my travels around the country. But so far as I can see, there's no kiln of any kind. There is a company locally that supplies wood chips for boilers, so I reckon they've subcontracted the harvesting and chipping processes to farmers who don't want to do real farming any more.

Yerman would also appear to be doing a line in hardcore, judging by the piles of broken concrete that have also sprung up in recent years.

[490808]

Surely a 10m high pile of woodchips is going to rapidly become a 2m high pile of compost?

[CelticRambler]

I don't drive that route particularly frequently, so not sure how long any one pile stays on site. A lot of commercial services around here are done on a sector-by-sector basis, so it's possible he's processing a week's (or a fortnight's) worth of material then having it collected on a fixed schedule ...

All I can be sure of is the volume of material he's handling has got steadily larger as the years have gone by. And also that other landowners aren't burning their skinny branches in the fields anymore either, after they've felled single trees. That's because they've been prohibited because of the risk of causing unmanageable wild-fires, but the material has to go somewhere and it's often gone out of the field before the main trunk and branches.

Of course, maybe he's making compost! There's a big demand for that too, these days - though it's mostly met by the local authorities.

[Setanta]

Thinking of buying one or two of these or else one and a mulcher,

I think there's a big opening with Eamonn Ryan banning burning of bushes etc on farmland