What has been your experience:Banghead in clearing and grubbing long side the roadway of brush and small trees that have ground in over the years? Looking to widen a rural road, road bed base also to get widened 3 to 5 feet but its overground with brush and trees. Looking for low cost ways others through experience have settled upon in performing this type of work on a project. Please list detail explaination of what you have found to be most effective at the lowest cost. Merry Christmas.
What size trees? If small, 2-3" I would use a bushhog either on a tractor or hydraulic head for skid or excavator. Then grub it out with a GP or ditching bucket. David
We use a dozer and pile the brush up along the right of way. You can do any dirt work needed while you are there.
X2 a dozer but if the trees are real small mow then down with a bushhog first.
Use an excavator with a thumb. Send a guy down with a chain saw to fall and buck all the stuff that would be a pain to smash with the excavator. Walk down and pile. You could then burn it or load it into trucks to be hauled off. I have used a mulching head in an excavator but if your gonna widen the road bed and it has to be stripped of topsoil debries ect. That is not a good idea to use one. Makes a mess. Plus you have the hoe there to strip the roadside and prep for new whatevers. Just my 2 cents.
Question for "sandnsnow", what machine do you use and its bucket width: and any idea how much production you get doing it this way the actual clearing of the road side, not picking it up into trucks; by say square yards per hour cleared grubbed.
When we do it we use a Case CX75 16,000lbs machine. Zero swing with a 30" bucket. It is 8' wide so it fits on the shoulder nice and easy for people to get around. This machine also has a us mower flail mower attachment that we use to clear power line easements. We clear 10' in and 8' feet up. Most of the road sides around here have about 5 years growth before we get to them again. We average about 2 1/2 miles of roadway in a 10 hour shift if we do not take the time to load it out on trucks. That is also one side if the road. 20 hours to go 2 1/2 miles both sides. 5 miles per 40 hour work week. That is how we bid it. We tried bigger machines but it was'ent much faster. It was harder on the road surface and was harder to see around. We send a operator, guy with saw and a flagger. The flagger moves the caution signs and flags when the machine is on a blind corner. So somewhere around 1000 sq yds to hour? When we pile logging sites for the feds and the state, we average about 6 acres a day with a 40,000lbs machine. That is just piling whats on the ground. The 8' up on the roadside can take alittle bit.:Banghead Does this make any since?
Growing up that was one of our yearly projects, numerous road work for the townships. Road grading, grubing and ditch work, plus new culverts, etc. Kind of that run what you brung, we had two Dresser TD-15C's(so much better than a CAT that size) and later a 312 Cat excavator and for the knolls and hills, used the 860 John Deere scraper. Always had the townships grader to use for anything we needed and our skid loader as well. Always nice when a farmer would let you use a pasture or part of the field to pile the trees to burn or cut up for fire wood. Burying or hauling away the stumps depending on where you were located. Good luck. Trbo
Thinking about your post reply, trying to understand it. Your machine has a 30 inch bucket which is 2.5 feet wide. You are clearing 10 feet one one side of road and 8 feet up into trees, up five year growth. You clear 2.5 miles in a 10 hour day. that is: 2.5 miles x 5280 = 13,200 feet in 10 hours or 1,320 feet in one hour on average. 1,320 feet divided by 2.5 wide bucket is 528 bucket widths per hour. 528 bucket widths per hour divided by 60 minutes is 8.8 bucket widths per minute. So in one minute you clear the vegation from the side of the road 8.8 bucket widths wide or 22 feet wide, 10 feet deep off the side of the road and 8 feet up into the trees. I can not figure out how you do this! Are you using the flail attachment instead of 30 inch wide bucket? If so what kind of production do you get with the bucket not the flail attachement?
I would like to see that in operation !
lakeside, I'll bet that the time figures are for sand&snow runnin the mower on the excavator "This machine also has a us mower flail mower attachment that we use to clear power line easements." Your going to want something with enough power for the occasional small stump, but reach is going to be more important. Any 10 toner w/ a hydraulic thumb should do ok.
Hmmmm ! ...lakesidebob I think you were over thinking this one showing us all of the math here ....LOL ..... I think if you would have given us more detail of what the job entailed we would be able to give a reasonable answer.... maybe some pics or when you say grubbing do you mean that the ground has to be scarified or what ? ..... If you are only trying to take down the roadside brush then an excavator mounted mulcher will work awesome .... there are even units that can be mounted on big cab enclosed tractors and even ones for mounting on a grader .... You say most cost effective maybe we should know what equipment you already have to give a proper answer .... like how long is a piece of string ?? On my pic on the left shows 2 excavators and the one in the rear is a 312 Cat it has a 6' dia Davco mulcher on it I was doing a gov't contract widening up 100 kms (62miles) of logging roads X 2 for both sides ... my perameters were 3 meters back of the ditch center, which was not at the edge of the shoulder at all times ... so on an average I had to boom/stick all the wat out to acheive the measurements that I was given ....so usually that meant about (including the bursh on the over grown shoulder) about 6-7meters wide ..... in a 10 -12 hr day we completed on average of 1.5 kms finished (both sides of the road ) a day ... so because you like math so much that was 1.5 x 2 = 3kms/day or 3000 meters/day or .9320822 x 2 = 1.8641645 miles/day finished .... the next question you might ask (back to how long the string was) how old was the over grown growth and how much brush was there or how big were the largest trees in the ROW ..... well it was 35-40yrs of lack of maintenance and it was thick and it had trees, pine, fir, poplar, aspen, cottonwood (tough stringy crap) ect. up to 8" in diameter .... we Never fired up a saw to bring these puppies down ... everything was chewed down to a maximum height (gov't spec) of 200mm or 20cm or 8" sandnsnow was just trying to help by giving you a circumstance he of a job he done, as I did as well ...... WE NEED MORE INFO .... to answer the question ....:cool2
Thank you Craft for your reply it is appreciated, and I did not want to imply any negative comments in my reply to sandnsnow although reading it now after several days/weeks it may seem that way to someone. I will try to post representative photo(s) of road way so you all can see the plant/trees that have to be removed. The tree stumps have to come out of the road right of way. Tree trunks go up to 6 - 7 inches breast height. It has been decades since the right of way was cleared. Balsam, Spruce, Poplar or Aspen, Birch. Most area is heavy with tree growth other small % of area sparce with trees but then brush. Eight feet clearing each side of road bed, so 16 feet minimal width x's 2 miles long. What is most cost effective to use a big portable rental chipper to grind up the brush and limbs, haul logs off site, blow chips into woods or haul tree limbs brush off site for burning (can not burn on site) and logs off site (for fire wood)? And then what have you all found out on dealing with the tree stumps best to have the stumps buried out side the right of way, or trucked off site to be burnt later? I also have a CAT 312 excavator with 42 inch wide bucket with thumb to do the job. Long stick so reach is 28 feet from center of turn house swivel or 23 feet off edge of road surface reach of bucket teeth. Road surface is 16 feet wide. Just trying here to see if some one has figurered out a low cost way to clear brush along side a road with an excavator and its bucket. Also a CAT 304 with long stick and 24 inch wide bucket, 15 feet or so effective reach from side of cab. As I do not have a mulcher at my disposal; that information is not of use, although others reading these posts may find it usefull for their firms operation present or future.
Can you flush cut small stumps? a 150hp chipper and a few guys could take care of most of that in a day, then excavate the big stumps, blow the chips into the woods, the chipper will handle up to 18 inch dia logs, might have to slash branches but it'll eat em up, blow the chips off the side as you move. Chip everything unless you want firewood or someone wants to buy the pulp.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1mO6Tso5oM
I cleaned up a 4 acre mess someone made using a 250hp chipper and a takeuchi tb53 w/ thumb. My advise is this, rent a whole tree chipper (200 hp min.) 18" inlet, drum style, feed table if you can get it. attach it to a triaxle dumptruck and back down the road. Morbark's mountain goat would be a second choice Put the 312 & thumb in front and straddle the ditch, that way he can swing to his left and feed the chipper. Push the trees over with the excavator, and have a laborer cut the stump free, toss the entire tree into the chipper and blow it back into the woods. Cuttin firewood sounds cool but it takes too much time to deal with. Toss the stumps into the dump as you go. May want to put a different truck on the chipper and keep the dump ahead if your filling it too quickly or cant reach it and the chipper at the same time. Have the 312 rough grade as he goes and bring up the rear with the 304 running a grade bar, or cleanup bucket finishing behind you.