Re: Garden Shredder

[Ricardo]

Get a goat then you can keep the bin for your DIY rubble, or disposing of "Her Indoors!"

Seriously though, wheelie bins are great. I've had mine for years and have got rid of all sorts of crap in it. Whenever I've put building rubble in it I've always expected to see it still sitting unemptied by the kerb, but they always take it.

Recomendations please regarding the choice and purchase of a garden > shredder. > > We have just acquired a wheelie bin for (council) disposal of green > waste. The collection is fortnightly and I wish to get maximum value > for money by cramming as much as possible into the bin. > > To this end I reckon that I should shred everything bar grass clippings > that is destined for the bin. > > I also have a Lawson Cypress hedge that I'd really like to put out for > the bin men! Unfortunately it is 25 years old with trunks > proportionally huge, however I'm tempted to reduce it's height if I can > direct the suitably reduced branches into the bin. > > Incidentally the bin will accept branches up to 50mm diameter by about > 1m length but I think that putting anything that size in it is a waste > of the limited number of collections. > > The bins are emptied by machine, unlike our domestic refuse > collection(!), so weight is not an issue. > > TIA Richard > >

[Conrad Edwards]

Another vote for the Bosch screw feed here....I originally bought a B&Q own brand shredder that just has a rotatng disc with two blades...absolutely useless and a pain during it's frequent blockages...that got taken back for a refund the next day. The Bosch is superb, except on very wet/sappy stuff that can form a thick gunge...which you can reverse feed out to clear.

[Paul Mc Cann]

snip

What sort of stuff do you feed throught it.

We have a Bear Cat with a petrol engine powering it. It will chew up branches as thick as your wrist but chokes on very green stuff. We have a Leylandii hedge along one boundary which is 15 ft high and a couple of hundred yards long. It gets a once yearly trim and the branches make a good mulch but it is very tedious to keep stopping to clear the blockages with the green stuff.

I have been tempted to get one o fthe Bosch ones such as you have but someone else said they were as prone to blockage on green stuff as the one we have.

What do you think ?

Paul Mc Cann

[Andrew McKay]

Gosh, I haven't seen slowworms in ages! Brings back memories of my childhood when we used to see quite a few around our area.

Are there any benefits to having slowworms around the place? I assume they deal with beetles and other garden pests.

Andrew

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[Andy Hall]

Various things.

I have a low hedge on the far side of my garage which is something like a Cotoneaster. It gets clipped with a hedge trimmer and the clippings, which tend to be quite long in some cases go through OK.

One of my neighbours has a row of trees similar to Leylandii but I guess a dwarf variety since they are slower growing and not as tall. This needs to be cut back periodically. The branches are typically up to a couple of cm and go through OK.

I just got rid of a Hazel that had grown to about 3m and was in the way. That had branches up to 3cm joining a fairly short trunk. All went through apart from the trunk.

The only things that don't work that well are if the material is very wet. However, a couple of days in a pile to dry and it goes through OK. Likewise, thin springy plants like creepers when freshly cut tend to spring away from the screw. Again a couple of days to dry and they go through OK.

These last two issues are the same with any shredder, I think, but this one is mmuch less likely to jam up and can be easily unbunged with the reverse switch.

I find one good technique is to keep back some of the more woody material and put that through with the leafy stuff. It then pulls it through.

.andy

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[Paul Mc Cann]

On Mon, 04 Aug 2003 20:16:35 +0100, Andy Hall wrote: snip

Thanks Andy. I'm getting very tempted to give one a go.

IPaul Mc cann