Stump removal

[Denray]

Any suggestions on how to remove a stump like this, on the cheap?

Click to Enlarge

65.35 KB

[inspector57]

Cheap, Weed killer applied full strength into holes drilled into the face of the stump. Not legal and takes years.

Faster, an ax and shovel. Comes with lots of blisters.

My method. Hire a guy with a stump grinder!

[Jim Katen]

A shovel and an old, beater chainsaw.

[kurt]

Nightmare horrorshow. Spend money.

[Nolan Kienitz]

Attach some boards and make a solid picnic table out of it ... []

[Jim Baird]

Is that a Bradford pear stump?

I'm told ammonium nitrate fertilizer poured into bored holes will speed up process.

[ghentjr]

Ten gallons of gas and a match. Drill large bore holes into the stump and add the gas. Then stand back.

[Marc]

Ask Jim K to spare some of his pet termites.

Marc

[Tom Raymond]

I have a silver maple stump in my yard that was 40" diameter and about knee high. It's been 5 years and it is almost ready to shovel into the wheel barrow. Last summer there was a pileated woodpecker that visited almost every day, this year it's too soft.

There used to be a few crazy farmers around here that would remove them with dynamite.

[Les]

you can borrow this.

Click to Enlarge

61.65 KB

[Scottpat]

Stump grinder! Neighbor had a similar multi-trunk stump removed for $400. Left enough mulch for the neighborhood.

[gtblum]

How about renting a hydro laser or some other type of high pressure power washer to blast the dirt away from the roots, then change the tip, and slice the roots with the same tool?

[John Kogel]

What Jim said, old saw with a couple of old chains and a box of round files. Practice a few cuss words before you start..

You could have pulled it over while it still had a trunk. I dropped quite a few trees that way with my GMC 1 ton, an old logging snatch block and 75 feet of cable. You tie the cable about 10 feet up the tree, clove hitch. Down through the block that is anchored really well to another tree, a big one. Then go around the back of the tree about 10 feet up. Then out to the truck. That truck had the 292 6 in it, a real tractor. After the hitch came off I wrapped a boom chain around the axle and pulled with that. []

[kurt]

Anyone here actually dug out an old stump per Katen? If they have, they'd not be recommending it as a solution. It's the ultimate ball/body/equipment buster.

I kinda like Blum's idea. Blast out the dirt with a power wash/hydro laser arrangement. Not sure where to get a hydro-laser.....

But really, this is why the Good Lord created Heavy Equipment. Forego your daily coffee or whatever other discretionary budget items in your life, and become best friends with the guy that owns the biggest baddest skidder in your 'hood. Actually, we've pulled out bigger stumps than that with someone that knows their way around a good front end loader/backhoe arrangement. Dig, push, pull, lift, dig, pull, push....extraction. It's remarkable how easy it is with the miracle of hydraulics and heavy iron.

Tear the yard and stump a new one, be done with it, and go back to running whitewater.

[Denray]

We had this tree messing up our driveway. With the help of this equipment it was tough getting it out, in one day. The one in question here is in the sister-in-laws back yard. No room to get heavy equipment there. No more roof damage from the tree so they, being Newfies and all, are willing to chip away at it.

Thanks for the replies.

Click to Enlarge

38.72 KB

Click to Enlarge

43.46 KB

Click to Enlarge

43.1 KB

Click to Enlarge

35.23 KB

[kurt]

Don't bother trying to burn it out. All you end up with is a big chunk of charcoal. I've got a short history of leaving half burnt stumps in a few properties I've owned. Sounds good on the front end, but....they burn for a while, then it gets down to a charball, and all that char insulates the still green/wet stump. They don't burn for squat.

A tree grinder service can get back there if you have an approximately 5'-6' passage. They can grind it down to a pile of mulch that's still a mountain of shit to haul, but they can at least get it ground down.

[Marc]

Don't bother trying to burn it out. All you end up with is a big chunk of charcoal. I've got a short history of leaving half burnt stumps in a few properties I've owned. Sounds good on the front end, but....they burn for a while, then it gets down to a charball, and all that char insulates the still green/wet stump. They don't burn for squat.

A tree grinder service can get back there if you have an approximately 5'-6' passage. They can grind it down to a pile of mulch that's still a mountain of shit to haul, but they can at least get it ground down.

Umm, actually, burning it out isn't a bad idea. I tried it once on a 30 incher. Lucky for me, I had kept all the trunk and split it up myself with 3 steel wedges, an ax and a maul. Took a couple months. About half of it has been burnt on the stump so far and the dirt is just beginning to show at the bottom.

I'll miss all those evenings though, 'tending fire' in my backyard while discussing life's mysteries with the spouse.

I'll post a photo of it tomorrow, maybe with a fire going. Works very well once you have a decent cavity.

Marc

[Jim Katen]

Anyone here actually dug out an old stump per Katen? If they have, they'd not be recommending it as a solution. It's the ultimate ball/body/equipment buster.

I live on the remains of a 130-year old walnut orchard and pulled several of them in the early days, when I had energy. (Although I left out the part where you use the 1949 8N to assist in the removal. A decent pickup truck would probably work just as well.)

Use a shovel to dig out around the larger roots, cut through them, and start pulling on the stump with the tractor. The movement will reveal where the rest of the big roots are. Dig & cut them. Repeat as necessary. A stump like that will take a whole weekend.

[kurt]

One guy wants to tend a charball while whaling away with wedges and a maul for a couple months, the other wants to burn up chainsaws, the drive train and rear end of a perfectly good truck, and dig holes all day for (at least) an entire weekend.

I guess I underestimated the stump busting masochistic streak in you guys.

Machinery that makes life easier always fascinated me.....others, well.....everyone gets to do whatever it is they want to do.....

[Jim Katen]

One guy wants to tend a charball while whaling away with wedges and a maul for a couple months, the other wants to burn up chainsaws, the drive train and rear end of a perfectly good truck, and dig holes all day for (at least) an entire weekend.

I guess I underestimated the stump busting masochistic streak in you guys.

Machinery that makes life easier always fascinated me.....others, well.....everyone gets to do whatever it is they want to do.....

The man asked how to do it on the cheap. He's aware of the expensive options.

[kurt]

My point is, there is no on the cheap stump removal. One pays with their wallet, their time, or their ass.

Regardless, one pays. Having spent most of my life paying with the latter two and understanding the actual economic therein, I was making a simple plea for sanity.

Advice one doesn't want to hear is sometimes the best.

[Rob Amaral]

Stump grindah.. period.. .not worth the heart attack..

[John Kogel]

Nah, let the termites have their way with it. They work cheap. []

[mlparham]

I like the 30 second solution. Write a check.

However there was a recent article in JLC about a guy that used a readily available explosive system to blast rock from a construction site. It looked like a lot of fun.

[Jim Baird]

haha

I have dug up many a stump using the Katen method, but I was too embarrassed to own up to my low-tek style. Toughest one I ever dug up was a black cherry one that was about 24 inches in diameter. The hole looked like a wartime foxhole time I got done. My estimate of the OP stump says it would take a 3 ft diameter hole about 42 inches deep...not to be done in one weekend. You need a good mattock, a good straight spade, an axe and a good splitter (down here we call them "go-devils" ((mine is a 6 lb er)) (((anything heavier works you too hard))))

BTW no tractor, no truck, just good old fashioned leverage provided by the stump's length.