Is there a "special" tool for moving dead brush 100 feet away?

I own a wood chipper, but I've learned that a 2-inch chipper takes forever ... so ... for fire prevention, I need to arrange brush for professional wood chipping next week, so, last night, I created a half dozen small brush piles which need to be moved to the roadway:

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I need to move some brush uphill, some downhill, and then, once on pavement, down about a hundred or so feet into piles convenient for the professional wood chipping crew:

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My question: Not owning a pickup truck, is there a hand tool for moving brush piles en masse a hundred feet once on the roadway?

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PS: Sorry for the poor quality photos; it took far longer to collect the brush and move it down the hill than I thought, so these pictures are when it covered the driveway and I was moving it to the roadway about 100 to 150 feet away.

Reply to
Danny D
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That is what I do when I trim the shrubs in the yard. Spread the tarp and put the trimmings on it and then pull it to the edge of the woods to dump it. If I had a lot and a long way to go, I might be tempted to put a rope on the tarp and pul it with the riding mower.

Reply to
Ralph Mowery

What he says sounds pretty familiar to me, it's what I do for somewhat shorter hauling distances,

Reply to
hrhofmann

Rake it over a rope with an eye in it, wrap the rope up over the pile, through the eye and pull it tight. You can drag quite a bit of the pile that way. This works particularly well if you don't cut the pieces too short.

Reply to
gfretwell

+1
Reply to
DD_BobK

Lord love a duck...you have hands and arms...pick up the wood and CARRY it to where you want it. How do you thing mankind has transported stuff for eons?

Geez....some pipples are slow.

===

Reply to
Roy

In news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com, Oren belched:

turtles and slugs and.............

Reply to
ChairMan

You know, Oren, that's a good idea!

It's embarrassing, but, I hadn't even thought about using the recycling bins for *temporary* transport!

I actually have quite a few of those green/blue buckets, because I fill them up every week for the recycling crew, but I knew that it would take me the rest of my life if I tried to fill them this time.

I'm not finished yet, but the four-foot high piles of fifteen feet long branches stretches at least 150 feet along the roadway.

It's a long linear pile because I had to keep them behind the white line - and there isn't much room on the roadway:

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Reply to
Danny D

This is the best idea of all, although I'll have to carry or throw the ten to twenty-foot gnarly long wood branches onto the tarp, rather than raking them onto it.

I only realized I must have left my tarp camping last week when I went to look for it; so I will ask my buddies if they have it perchance.

Until then, I was using this 100-foot safety rope, using the same concept and idea of the tarp.

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Reply to
Danny D

Thanks Ralph! That was a great idea of using the rope!

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I *wish* I had a riding mower (or a bobcat!) but, in the end, I used my hefty weight to pull the unwieldy 15 feet wide bundles a few hundred feet down to the roadway to then line them up the 150 or so feet it took to fit all the four foot piles in a long linear row behind the white line.

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Reply to
Danny D

That idea of using the 100-foot rope worked like a charm!

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I found, with experience, that a double wrap was easier to hold, and a double loop of that double wrap allowed for ease of steering left and right (like a pitman arm, idler arm combination) since the bundle tended to go off course after

50 to 100 feet down the roadway.
Reply to
Danny D

I sure wanted dynamite. Or gasoline, after collecting these branches from a wide swath of about 200 feet of hillside, funneling it all downhill into a series of tall channels that dumped onto the roadway:

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At that point, the pile still had a few hundred feet to go, but at least the next hundred feet were on pavement (which is infinitely easier than moving the stuff to that collection point from scatterings along the steep hillside).

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Reply to
Danny D

I cut the brush at the base last year, so they're all their original size, which means a lot are 20 feet long, although the average is probably something around 10 to 15 feet long.

They're pretty gnarly though:

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Reply to
Danny D

As you noted, I did carry the sticks, one by one, from the hillside, which looked like this after a few hours of carrying:

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But then, at about five different points, there was this taller-than-a-man pile at junction points to deal with:

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I was looking for a better way than *carrying* five of those piles a hundred and fifty feet by hand to the final destination.

Reply to
Danny D

Funny you mention that, because I fell back into the stone age building a rustic "plow" out of a chunk of wood:

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I used the yoke end to push the piles into bundles:

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And, I used the barbed end to tease the tangled mess apart:

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Once I got the pile manageable, then I moved into the rope age, which did the bulk of the distance moving.

And, when it was all almost cleaned up, only then could I move into the wheelbarrow and broom age to clean up the aftermath.

It was then a hot shower and poison oak detoxifying step.

Reply to
Danny D

Hmmm... looking at this picture of just one of the collection points, would you use a wheelbarrow on that tangled mess?

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The wheelbarrow *did* come in handy though, near the end, when all that was left are these gnarly bits and pieces:

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Reply to
Danny D

I think he means me! :)

It took hours over a span of three days to clear the entire hillside by pushing the brush downhill to five collection points, dumping it onto the pavement - and then moving it to the roadway.

I did lose my ladder at one point ... I was perplexed about where it went, until I saw it buried under the piles as I teased them apart:

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My next clearing will be the hardest of all, as the brush has to move *uphill* about 50 feet! That's going to take some mechanical ingenuity to accomplish efficiently.

Reply to
Danny D

Just curious. Did you just spend more time here at A.H.R asking questions, providing updates, taking and posting photos, etc. than you would have spent just piking up the branches and moving them? It seems like you did.

I can't believe what a massive production you made out of such a small and simple job.

Whatever you do, don't try to build a dog house. It will take you years.

Reply to
JoeBro

Learning takes more time than doing.

Snapping & annotating photos takes more time than not. Enjoying the learning is far better than the task itself.

Most people ask, and leave. Most people just want the job done (any way they can).

Reminds me of the workmen who use a screwdriver & hammer for everything, simply because it's expedient (caring not for galling your equipment).

I'm not most people; I enjoy learning about everything related to home repair - mostly because I've never had the luxury of time & property to do it myself before.

I can't wait 'till I build my custom hillside tool shed!

Reply to
Danny D

I can see it now...

Is there a special foundation for keeping my tool shed from sliding down this hill.

Pictures of a pile of lumber and tools in a valley.

Reply to
Dan Espen

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