I am looking to rent an excavator to clear 10 acres of flat land with palmettos and slash pines to 20" diameter. I am looking to rent for two weeks to give myself enough time. So far I have found two local options: 1) 18,500 lb machine with a hydraulic thumb 2) 30,000 lb machine without a thumb I have a Kubota L5740 with a root grapple to clean up the material that I remove with the excavator. Just wondering if the 18,000 lb. machine would be able to handle the larger pines, as I sure would like to have use of the thumb. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Steve
I would try to find a 30,000lb at least with a thumb. 50,000 lb would be nice with thumb. sometimes the rental rate for a larger machine is not much higher (30,000 vs 50,000) but will do way more work=less rental time.
In my opinon, and I've never been to Flordia, but I have killed a few trees in a few different states, neither of those two machines are a good option. I would look for something from 50 - 70k pounds in excavators with thumbs, If I was determined to use an excavator. I hate to break it to you, but your Kubota isn't going to like 20" pine very much, you may find yourself using your rented piece to move them. If it were my job, I'd be looking at a 40k pound or heavier dozer or track loader. Either one are very effective at land clearing.
I have an 18,000 lb excavator with hydraulic thumb (Volvo ECR88) and a Kubota 5240 with grapple. My technique is to drop the trees with a chainsaw, move the trunk in pieces and dig the stump. All hardwood here and rocky soil. The 18000 lb excavator works but it is slow digging bigger stumps (18+ inches) in this soil, requiring more digging and repositioning to get the stump free. Bigger is definitely better for stumping. I've done clearing with and without a hydraulic thumb. I would strongly suggest getting an excavator with a thumb, preferably a hydraulic thumb. I've had a lot of stumps that the Kubota would not lift. Sometimes scraping the dirt off the stump will get the weight down enough for the Kubota to handle. Otherwise you can roll them with the grapple or carry them with the excavator. Good Luck. Jim
I'm no expert on little hoes, the smallest I've worked is a 160, but I've cleared a many an acre of 20" pines in the southeastern US. You can count on a thick taproot 8-10' deep. A 215 size hoe will have to take a bucket of dirt out on 3 sides, then reach up high and push the tree over, very easy, 5-10 minutes a tree. If the tree is cut down first, you can count on a LOT more digging to get the stump up. It's possible to do the job with either one of those machines, but I doubt if a fairly inexperienced operator is going to clear an acre a day, every day, with either of them. I know you won't with an 18,000 lb machine. With very good tractor loader backhoe (18000 lb), you'd be looking at 30-45 mins per stump.
what part of Florida are you in?
Welcome to the Forums sjm1580!:drinkup What is your experience with excavators and clearing?
Naples
Not enough to claim to be an expert.
Thanks for the response. Very helpful.
You should be fine with a 35000 to 40k lb machine the soils up that way from the digging and clearing ive done done on the west side of florida have all been loose and sandy soils and the trees dont take much to bring them.down only thing i can tell you it at least a rigid thumb to make life allot easier so you can pluck and place trees where you want them more Efficiently
90% of the trees are in the 3"-6" range. With a few in the larger range. What are your thoughts on trying to use the 18k machine with a thumb? Thanks for the help. Steve
3-6", the 18,000 pounder will walk right through them; and if you only have a few big trees, it will get them too, I just don't know how fast. 10 acres is a lot to clear in 2 weeks, for small machines. The biggest factor is, what are you going to do with the debris? Do you own the Kubota, so you can take stuff down with the hoe steady for 2 weeks if need be? Is this your property, or are you trying to make a profit?
I do own the property and the Kubota. My idea was, to knock everything down with the excavator, return it and then pile the vegetation in burn piles with the Kubota. If I rent the smaller 18k lb. machine I am likely to rent it for an entire month as the price drops a lot for a monthly rental. Sound like a good plan?
Yair . . . I still cannot come to terms with the concept of using excavators for clearing. There are a few video clips on the net and I have gone out of my way to watch excavators clearing right of way and such like and for all intents and purposes they appear (to me) to a complete and utter waste of time and money . . . and unless rigged for timber work bloody dangerous as well. As stumpjumper83 has mentioned a trackloader or decent D7 size dozer is the tool for clearing but the dozer would need a tree-pusher to just walk up and tip the larger trees. Any concept of chain sawing trees and then digging out the stumps seems really odd and the only time it can be justified is if you want to mill the timber. The trunk for leverage and the head of the tree for weight are worked to your advantage when tipping. Cheers.
Scrub hit a good point on taking large trees down with an excavator can be dangerous if you don't know what you're doing. However, depending on the job, I prefer an excavator for clearing with a 953 as cleanup. I won't use a dozer for clearing as the sites I do are small (1-10 acres) and it's more efficient with an excavator as burning is usually not allowed so all the brush has to be either ground on site or hauled off. If it's a tree in a tight spot on a small job, I'll go with an excavator every time. I don't understand the cut first and then dig stump method either, it's just more work. It's much faster to take a tree down whole. If the wood is salvageable, saw the logs with the trees on the ground and then clean up stumps and limbs, stack your timber for haul out. Back to the original question. An 18K pound machine is going to take a while to clear 10 acres as others have said. Even if the trees are small 3-6", it's still going to take a while compared to a larger machine due to reach and working area. Your Kubota will be overwhelmed and it will take a while to clean up 10 acres of debris after it's on the ground. For reference, if I were bidding the job I would plan on 5-7 days with a 320 hoe and a 953 to get it cleared and stacked for burning. That being said, it's tough to give advice without seeing the property.
I'll second Scrub Puller's comments to be careful. Many of the trees here have broken branches hanging up high. Others have rotten sections up high. I have pushed over a few trees with the excavator but don't feel comfortable pushing over big trees with only an excavator rops over me. I can pull 3-4 inch trees out of the ground pinched between bucket and thumb with the stick close in. I never tried but 6 inch trees would probably push over pretty easy. Deciduous tree stumps hold a lot of dirt. I had to scrape them clean and use a blower to burn them. Hopefully yours will burn better. Also be careful of stacking with the Kubota. Our trees have branches every which way and I have had branches go though the back of the grapple and into the front guard. Near miss to the radiator! Consider adding screens to the back of the grapple and front of the grill guard. The bottom also has a number of linkages/cables/filters that can be damaged running over branches. Scrub Puller I agree my method is slow. But I'm working solo in a small area with what I own. Timber sales pay for fuel and small sections of a tree are easier to handle with small equipment. Jim
Great advice, Thanks!
Yair . . . Of course I put my big foot in it again . . . I keep thinking pile it up and burn and then rake out the ashes. I guess its a completely different story if the material has to be loaded out and hauled . . . a dozer would be of limited use although I would imagine a track loader with a four in one could be handy. I'll keep my trap shut in future. (big grin) Cheers.
I hope not! I learn a lot from these discussions. Jim.
I wouldnt use an 18k lb excavator to clear 10 acres of land mainly because i cant give that much time to a project. If i were clearing a property for my self i would rent a larger excavator clear and stack trees hire out a grinder mulch down the trees and call it a day but if you have the time go for it. With enough time and patience i could clear those 10 acres with a backhoe
How badly do you want the stumps out? I've run a 20 tonne excavator (40,000LB?) with an 8 foot root rake, clear post harvest pine blocks with medium to heavy slash and some regen knockdown. Lineraking about 4 hectares a day (10 acres) apart from the stumps you end up with soil ready to plant grass in 16 metre wide strips with a 4 metre wide 3-4 metre high windrow of slash between each row of cleared ground. Cheapest way would be to get a saw operator/s to drop the lot then rake it up. This pic shows it done to replant spec for commercial pines in light slash, if you wanted to cultivate the soil with the rake and pretty it up around all the stumps you get thru about half the area each day. If you really want the stumps gone then I agree with Scrub, decent sized dozer will do a cleaner job faster. Good luck.
Yair . . . Logan . I have often wondered why folks don't put wider tools on excavators and always supposed it was because of the twisting effect on the boom . . . obviously you can. Also, to my eyes that rake looks as though it is set up to push away from the machine and that is a whole different ball game as regards the ability to run a rake. I have always been told that excavators have little power on the "push away" function because of the configuration of the rams. Could you set me straight on that one mate? Cheers
Hey Scrub I was actually told on day one something long the lines of don't pull in, keep that slash the fu** away from my machine, I modified it so I could tell the landowners, "don't pull or you'll go blind!" Which was potentially true with the hairy slash on pines.Much safer and faster to push away and plenty of power there even if you have to dance her on her heels a bit for the bigger stuff but that was only with ridiculous slash say 10 feet deep where a processor has just sat and done 1000 tonne of delimb/debark in one spot. We used to run a two way rake which would sit off the machine standing up and easy to hook on, but the single push away was way faster, felt lighter and more balanced. The supervisor sometimes wanted us to pull slash down but only if we were in a steep sided gorge or working along a near vertical bluff. Saw wider rakes than this and I reckon you can use them ok just do any stump pulling with the stump inline with the stick/boom, even with this normal width one I would never try poking a corner under a stump because you could see the stress it places on the gear. It would handle bumping into hidden stumps under full power, but I wanted to make sure when I went to work I had the machine fully operational all day so didn't lever the tool. That said I could go round or slid over most stumps, only run into one in the wrong place on a narrow ridge maybe once a week at worst. Did about 1000 hrs on a ex200-5 and 2000hrs on a komatsu pc200….-8 I think raking. There's about 20 excavs in Kaingaroa doing mostly spot cultivation but I'd say most have a rake with them too, mostly 20t with a few 25t units.Cheers
Yair . . . Gotcha Logan. For me that "push away" technique would open up a whole new application for excavators. I have often thought about it but never really got into the nitty gritty of seeing if it was possible and now I bloody know. I would imagine that would be a marvellous tool for raking out the ashes after burning heaps? Cheers.
Reminds me of a time when we were working alongside one of the big gas pipelines to Gladstone. Pipe had been buried and topsoil replaced, excavator with wide rake grab was shaking soil from timber on the side of the RoW and stacking it neatly in piles ready to burn. He'd done about a km when big d*ck from the gas co. came along, said that wasn't the plan, it has to be scattered across the width of the RoW. Old mate duly complied and started back, flinging the timber out of the piles. Just as he got to the end, irate landholder arrived demanding that it be stacked and burnt. All this took best part of a week, I felt like buying the poor operator a beer or three. Cheers, Greg
don't cut the trees before felling. Geez! so much extra hard work.. A 30000# unit will get job done but heavier is better. I'm using a Hatichi EX270 for heavy clearing on second regrowth oaks and such. Digging those stumps is awful. Most of the 24 inch plus stumps take a hole large engough to bury the 4H dozer we're using. Yours will not be near as bad in sand and pines also helps. Learn how to push down on smaller and work way up to the bigger ones. Stack with excavator or at least get them lined up for pushing. KEEP WORK TO RIGHT OF BOOM.
With time, patience and enough money for diesel, anything is possible with any machine.
Scrub. You're right about the rams pushing the wrong way. A good friend of mine does a lot of root-raking in the forest I work in, and he was saying if you hop off the digger during the day, the lift rams are stone cold as they do bugger all but the dipper and bucket rams are steaming hot as they're working "backwards" all day. As an aside, I've always liked the "bone shaped" root rakes which can push and pull, but I can see Logan's point about running a single sided rake as 90% of the residue is pushed away.
A nice late model 350 would be one of the better picks for clearing ground in the Florida swamps..rent the biggest machine you can afford locally. The bigger, the faster it clears .. Go big ..too much of a machine is rarely an issue where not enough machine can be a show stopper...
Yeah not sure on the ashes deal Scrub, we were never allowed to light fires in Kang, although god knows we wanted to when doing spot cultivation in the thick slash. Just all their compartments are different ages so might be 40hectares harvested here then some 18 year old trees etc that won't be harvested for 10 years so not kosher to set fire to anything. The place was that big that I think they were harvesting 700hectares a month and said they can go on like that forever as it was a sustainable rate. An engineer in Rotorua made the rake I was using but can't recall his name just now. If making your own seems to be the smooth curve makes a big difference to speed. The tines were cut out of 20mm plate.
pafarmer, Well said, I would rather be oversized with any timber clearing than under any day. I never did any pine or any in sandy soils but rather oaks, hickory, elm, cottonwood ets. and they are all tough to get out any way you go at it and very hard on equipment. I can not imagine felling them and then going after the stump. I prefer a trackloader and excavator when doing that job.
I think the Gladstone is 100% correct. If you want to want to get of the tree including roots Mechanical advantage comes into play every time,google fulcrum,Leverage.
Pines push over easy. Generally speaking they are a shallow rooted tree with most roots running along the surface and one deep feeder directly to the middle. I will dig alittle around the base of the tree itself snapping the bigger roots on each side and then push the tree over. You get the root ball this way and clean up is at a minimum. A CAT 953 for pushing and piling or loading into the grinder from there. 10 acres of pine could be easily gone in a days time by an experienced crew, all that being said, Land clearing is dangerous work , loads of pitfalls waiting for you. If you are not expericed on a tracked excavator I recommend hiring it out to someone that is. In the long run it would be much cheaper and a whole bunch cleaner when it's done. Safety should be your prime concern. Asking what size machine to use is a very telling question in my humble opinion and it speaks to why hiring someone would be the more intelligent choice. Not saying your not capable just concerned that you would make a huge mess and have a high probability of hurting yourself, soneome else or a very expensive rented excavator.... I truly hope me being frank on the subject does not offend you in anyway. it's a bit more involved then most may think or feel and that concerns me a bit....good luck and be careful...
Na, your all wrong, put in a good sized forestry mulcher,about 300-400hp. No burning, no stump holes, just job done and ready for seeding, simple.
Ha ha....that would work for sure....not sure he up to that challenge.....be fun to watch someone try that has never operated one of those beasts...
Thanks for all the input. Ended up renting a Kobelco 170 and it worked out great. I did scratch the paint once or twice but that was extent of the problems with clearing the property. Thanks again for the advice!