The message from Steve contains these words:
Watch out for the effect of wind. I dug out an 18 foot Alder tree today and the wind gusting to 60 mph proved of considerable help but if you are sawing through a 30 foot tree well above ground level you really want a calm day.
I have a leylandii hedge to the East of my garden which I try to keep less than 15 feet high. It makes an excellent windbreak and as it runs North/South shading is not really a problem.
Thanks to everyone for ideas, warnings and experiences. Lots of good sensible and interesting advice given.
I think that I might have underestimated the strength of the roots and overestimated the power of the car before making the original post!
Coupled with the dangers of ropes snapping and the potential energy contained by them being released suddenly with a danger to life and property (sorry to hear about the window Dave :-) ) and the possibility of damage to drains etc., I have decided that they will just be reduced to stumps and left for a couple of years to weaken the roots before any extraction is undertaken. Thanks Phil. L for the suggestion.
I presume that these stumps will not need chemical treatment to kill them off as I believe that conifer stumps will just die anyway. I wonder whether chemical killing would hasten the weakening of the roots?
Once again, this group has come to my rescue and brought me down to earth!
Cheers
Steve
Light fires on them. Thats what I did. They smouldered down a long way.
That was after a year or so,
I actually took mine down with a hand saw..big two handed thing. It was about 2 ft diameter.
Cut it flush with the ground, left it, burnt it, and covered it.
Ive removed loads of stumps with a mini digger tho. Trench round while snapping any lateral roots, then dig under and pull. Usually it comes before the digger tips over. Great fun. I love mindiggers, For a 100 quid a weekend, they are great toys to play with in the garden.
That would be the easiest way and we love a good bonfire!
We will have to see whether our neighbours have bonfires first though. At the present place, we have had a good few with no complaints. I can understand people's objections to bonfires though, especially long lasting ones as would be needed to burn away the roots.
Thanks, another good suggestion. Sounds like fun too!
Steve
I had three (smallish, say a foot in diameter) trees in the back garden once I had cut down the trees I left the stumps protruding eight inches or so but drilled them (22-35mm holes) and filled these with a propriety stump killer used the stumps in the mean time as little stools (obviously not while the stump killer was still in evidence) for my children . Once the kids were too big /stumps too small, removed them by cutting out any roots that were accessible (say twenty minutes each). Have found one of the (very cheap) alligator type saws {
Ammonium Sulphamate. If you've got a friend in the chemical trade, you should be able to pick this up for a lot, lot less than the proprietary killers. Drill the holes to the size of some doweling (e.g., an old broom handle), pack the sulphamate into the hole drilled into the stump, glue or nail a section of dowel into the top of the hole, to keep interfering fingers out.
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