Ideas pls: Getting from back to front without a passageway

Chop them down to manageable chunks and use a wheel barrow - hand or motorised - to take them through the garage

In-situ bonfire, or create bug hotels out of the logs. Then you only have the lateral branches to get rid of.

If you look at tree fellers, they are nearly always big, very strong blokes. That's because chopping trees down is the easy part of the job. Lugging the bits of wood away is the hard part.

Most of the people on this NG are getting on a bit, so I assume that you're not planning to DIY this job?

If you're on good terms with your neighbour ask if you can take down a fence panel and use his path to get the trees out. Obviously any damage will be repaired immediately at your cost.

Or get a chipper on wheels - the basic consumer grade ones are sub £100 (or less if you buy used) and will fit through doorways - and chop up branches enough to feed into the chipper. A bin or barrow full of chippings is a lot easier to manhandle than the branches that made them up.

Then make a wheelable route the garage with planks etc to make it easy to move them through.

Once you're down to logs, chainsaw them into bits and hand carry. Or, if not conifer, keep them under cover for a couple of years and then sell as seasoned firewood (or give them away to someone who will do the seasoning themselves).

Theo

Some of the trees are a bit big, 30m high. The nearest to the house is a walnut and needs reducing to half size. Arborist says none of the trees (57yr old) are yet fully grown.

He took one look at the access and said I'd need to sort it before he would do any work.

That's one option but "he" is a fussy pensioner widow. And even then because of different levels it is awkward. I might have to wave a few £££ as well.

Not at all easy:

Something's going to get damaged.

Another idea, but it depends on the layout and quite a few £. Do a search on "conveyor belt hire". It might be possible to move the logs over the top of the garage into a skip at the front. It does beg a question, however, of how you get the conveyor equipment into the back garden.

Thanks.

The conveyor system, which possibly could be gravity, only has to reach the back garden over the garage+extension. The back is elevated.

Where would I get such a thing? Affordable?

I've been wondering whether I should approach scaffolders. The flat roof garage+extension is ~30m but the garage itself is 20m + 10m extension.

Maybe a combination of conveyor and scaffolding.

Depends where you are. Start here:

I hope you've got deep pockets, and then there's the issue of finding scaffolders to erect it, as their often up to their eyes in it with all the house building going on. This is from Surrey (no doubt one of the most expensive places:

Line the narrow bits to negotiate, with sheets of ply, before you start.

Small diggers are designed to fit through a hallway to solve a similar problem. I assume some temporary flooring is used. An electrical large wheelbarrow/small dumper truck could be worked in the same way. This might be a simpler solution that engineering a flyover.

Cheers

Dave R

Yes. But the issue would seem to be transportation of material not digging up the roots

If the house is the only option you put down major plastic sheet covered by cheap ply and guard door frames with taped on ply, and expect to spend some of the budget on redecoration...

Its one of the long tedious jobs whose only alternatives are extremely expensive. Like a crane in the road...or demolishing the garage and rebuilding it afterwards.

You could hire something like this (or maybe two):

Theo

Yes, but how do you get the chipper to the back of the house?

I'm guessing through the garage - not quite sure if there's any 80cm opening/turning space. If there isn't, now's a good time to build some in :-)

The people who lop trees, have to be able to climb hand over hand on their climbing rope. They flip the rope over an overhead branch and climb the rope. Sometimes, they "walk" up the trunk with their sports shoes, while doing hand over hand.

A better physique for a lopper, is a rock climber physique.

Their chain saw is tiny and clips to their belt. Sometimes they ascend with the chainsaw still idling. Other times, they stop the chainsaw before the next position.

On the team, lopper is the "desired job". The people who throw limbs in the chipper, have steel toe boots, and they are lesser team members. All the employees work a 40 hour week. There are no day labourers (for safety reasons, everyone has to be trained to be there).

The pulp truck has a boom lift on it. It can pick up a 12 foot section of trunk and load it into the truck. The humans aren't nearly strong enough to load something that big. The pulp truck isn't dispatched to every job.

Shorter sections of trunk can be put in the chipper truck (which is dispatched to every job, and carries some staff). That is the best opportunity for the steel toe boot guys to show off their prowess.

In real forestry (not in someones back yard), it's a lot of fancy equipment. Humans hardly matter for some of it. Maybe the trees here are headed for bog roll.

# For this one, there is a machine twice this tall developed years ago

"Putting The Delimber In Good Use With TMK 300 Tree Shear"

"Feller Buncher, Delimber, and Grapple Skidder Havesting Trees"

People used to climb trees, with spikes on the sides of their boots. There are sporting competitions to see "how fast you can climb a pole" with such kit. They don't seem to do that in the forest today. Possibly because the pole still has some "detail" on it, to be removed.

"Lumberjack World Championships Speed Climbing Compilation"

Paul

The funnel is removable - you'd need to check the width with the funnel removed which might buy you some cm. That particular example is the Timberwolf TW 13/75G but it doesn't give the width of the base unit alone. Review video:

Theo