It's an Avocado tree stump. The tree was cut down 3 years ago. All that remains is a 2' stump, 18" in diameter. I have a 20" Poulan Pro, an 1 1/8" yacht braid rope and a 1 ton truck. Tool and method suggestions, please! TIA!
Wrong tools listed. You need a shovel, spade, axe, pick, your rope, truck and one of those big red digger bars for digging post holes is also handy to have.. You have to dig around the stump cutting all roots and pray that an avocado tree does have a tap root. Just before you see Chinese folks in the bottom of your moat you will be done. Then when the stump wobbles you might be able to pull it out with your truck. Having done this once or twice I believe a license should be required to plant a tree and to qualify for the license you have to dig out a stump.
Don't use your saw you will dull the blade almost instantly when it hits the dirt.
Okay, got all that but the post hole digger and axe. Guess I'm off to the store for the axe. I'm doing all right with my selection of shovels and digging bars, so I can work around the post hole digger. Of course, the local warehouse has a stump grinder for $100 a day. Should I?? I just need to get everything 4-6" below grade to continue my "sidewalk" work. Local arborists want $150 - 250 to grind it. Being the cheap guy that I am...........
Based om my own experience and echoing many posts in this NG, a commercial stump grinder does it best. That said, in your case if you can afford the time and effort to get access to all the roots and hack them off, you may be able to pull the stump out. Forget the chain saw for this chore and use a nice sharp axe. Check some of the tool rental stores for other equipment ideas. You may want a long 1/2" chain with a grab hook and slip hook instead of the rope, too. Might be a good idea to check the Owners Manual for your truck to pick out the best place to attach your pulling device. No point in duplicating the famous scene in "American Graffiti". Good luck.
I had a latino gentleman cut out a stump for me. It only took him about a half hour with a shovel and an axe. It is just dig and chop. We popped out the last bit with my truck.
I'm not worried about my rope. It came off of a material handler ( crane ) and is rated much higher than a 1/2" chain. Will take a heck of a shock load too! Are chains rated? Everything will be rigged to my Class V hitch.
Good. With a smaller rope, I would be worried that the rope is stretchy. What happens then is that you store a heck of a lot of energy in the stretched rope, and when something breaks, the rope itself, or whatever is at the end of the rope (for example a nice steel hook, a few pounds) goes flying like a missile. That's why chains are preferable: They don't stretch (much), instead they fail.
With your heavy hitch, there is PROBABLY no way you can damage the truck, given that you are using only the tires (in 4WD, preferably) to generate tension. It is easy to damage the frame of a truck by using a winch. Try this: Chain your trailer hitch to a solid tree, tie your winch cable to another solid tree, and turn the winch on. If you get lucky, you just tear the hitch or the front bumper off. If you get unlucky, you end up with a strangely twisted truck. I once saw a bunch of clowns using the winch on a 1-ton truck to make sure a douglas fir that was being felled goes in the right direction. The tree (at least 100' tall) decided to go the other direction, and first the truck got pulled rather rapidly about 30 or 50 feet through the dirt, and then the front bumper with the winch tore off. When the dust settled, the rear axle was gone (it had snagged on a stump), the frame was very twisted, and the front of the truck looked awful (the front bumper didn't come off without a fight). Interestingly, nobody was hurt, and no houses were squished.
Other than my obnoxious warnings, the plan that has been laid out here looks sound: Chop at the roots, going deeper and deeper. There is one part I disagree with: If you carefully remove as much dirt as possible, you can use a chainsaw on roots, and on the piece of the trunk that is belowground. This will still cause rapid wear to the chain (there are often rocks or dirt embedded in the wood down there), but that's nothing a little sharpening won't cure. And a new chain is only $20 or so. The advantage of this can be that you can make the stump much smaller (remove bits of it), or you can split it into several parts, and yank those out separately.
What we did once successfully on a 3' diameter Madrone stump was to cut a 8" trench into the stump with a chainsaw (fundamentally making a very large slot or dado in it), and then split it in half with two hydraulic bottle jacks placed in the trench. Each half was then reasonably easy to remove. This was in a location (on a steep slope) where stump-grinding is not an option.
"Joseph Meehan" wrote in news:vA9ld.145117$ snipped-for-privacy@fe2.columbus.rr.com:
Yeah, what if the roots push up the sidewalk later on and ruin your work? If it was simply in the yard someplace I'd do it yourself. This one you have I'd get a pro to grind it. You might get a cheaper price if you can find anyone with a hand operated chipper. It's still a big machine, but cheaper for them to operate. I had a tree stump so big that 2 people couldn't stretch around and touch each other's fingers. One place with a chipper on a truck wanted $1,000. By chance I found a place that had the smaller machine and it was $400.
That big root in the lower right of your picture needs to be cut and undermined. I also bet it has a brother or sister on the truck side of the stump. Remember the stump must wobble a bit before you can pull it out. The more dirt you move on the truck side the easier the pull-out. At least it looks like your have a decent digable dirt.
Since you started by only wanting it a few inches below grade you are done with only a few minutes work left. Ignore the 'don't use a chain saw' nay sayers. You have it well clear. Hose the ***t out of it, cut it with the saw just about the rosette of roots. If it dulls so what? Only takes a few minutes to re-sharpen or less than $10 to pay a shop to do it. The little dirt you will still be cutting isn't going to hurt the saw.
Yeah, I vote for dynamite or else just waiting till you see a tree removal service close by in the area. Ask them how much to stop by while they are there and grind it down, which will take 10 mins too. It's a lot quieter, though a little more expensive.
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