What is the point of chippers?

[jmac]

Time is money and chipping is faster, we do alot of work for the woodland trust and they usually want branches dragged away from paths and I always wish we could just fire it through the chipper. Chipping roadside stuff will be quicker and safer than leaving piles of brash and logs at roadside.

[dan blocker]

Squaredy, can you just not sit down instead of leaning against that big log all the time and just think about it?. I’m getting the impression people are wasting their time replying ?

Edited October 26, 2020 by dan blocker
Typo error

[woody paul]

39 minutes ago, jmac said:

Time is money and chipping is faster, we do alot of work for the woodland trust and they usually want branches dragged away from paths and I always wish we could just fire it through the chipper.

Quicker with small loader or even digger with grab on. 

[Mark J]

They're canny essential for urban based companies. Irrespective of the fact that you can process trees faster and therefore fit in more jobs, often there's no space for the massive tree in the tiny backgarden to be stacked.

[5 shires]

12 hours ago, Squaredy said:

OK I know chippers are to chip brash and help clear a site.  But what I really mean is why do tree surgeons and arborists generally dispose of waste with a chipper?

 

Forgive my ignorance as I am a miller not a tree surgeon, but unless there is no space (eg a domestic garden) why not just leave neat piles of brash and small diameter logs?  This would be far better for the environment and the thousands of species who need deadwood surely?

 

Is this driven by the customers eg road authorities who think leaving piles of logs will invite trouble?

 

I got to thinking this when a neighbour of my work site had a tree surgeon in to reduce a Red Oak in her garden; and the tree surgeon chipped all the waste (on to my site).  It was totally pointless as I would have quite happily given permission for them to leave it all unchipped, and the forest where this took place has thousands of trees felled every year as part of forestry thinning and none of this is ever chipped.

 

What am I missing?

While I have never thought of Chippers being a useless piece of equipment and far from being nothing else but a great piece of modern day equipment which overall make our job so much easier and less time consuming I have always wondered how basically a engine put on a frame and some wheels with a couple of fan belts connected to a set of blades can cost as much  as they do...you can easily go up £45k to £65k and more and yes I know Machines are more complicated than that but the basic set is frame,wheels,engine,belts and blades.

[IronMike]

I could understand the need for discussion if the thread title was-

 

What is the point of Forst chippers?

[maybelateron]

20 minutes ago, 5 shires said:

I have always wondered how basically a engine put on a frame and some wheels with a couple of fan belts connected to a set of blades can cost as much  as they do

The guy who does all our fabrication and metal repairs for us pointed out that chippers are not produced in large enough numbers to justify robotic manufacture. One reason why a chipper seems expensive compared to mass produced cars?

[PeteB]

13 minutes ago, 5 shires said:

While I have never thought of Chippers being a useless piece of equipment and far from being nothing else but a great piece of modern day equipment which overall make our job so much easier and less time consuming I have always wondered how basically a engine put on a frame and some wheels with a couple of fan belts connected to a set of blades can cost as much  as they do...you can easily go up £45k to £65k and more and yes I know Machines are more complicated than that but the basic set is frame,wheels,engine,belts and blades.

You've seen the factory Wayne, the infrastructure a d sheer amount of stuff needed I the supply chain to turn out a chipper gives the base line cost to base the price on.

 

With regards to the OP. Quite often, the roadside works (include rail and Utility tree work) produce too much  brash and timber to leave in habitat piles. These piles are quite often a fire or other safety risk. They tried a number of different ways of leaving habitat piles on smaller projects on the M5 some 15years ago, they artistically laid brash in lines but again, these meant problems later as they could not mulch down quick enough for the mowing that the original programme promoted!

 

 

 

[5 shires]

20 minutes ago, PeteB said:

You've seen the factory Wayne, the infrastructure a d sheer amount of stuff needed I the supply chain to turn out a chipper gives the base line cost to base the price on.

 

With regards to the OP. Quite often, the roadside works (include rail and Utility tree work) produce too much  brash and timber to leave in habitat piles. These piles are quite often a fire or other safety risk. They tried a number of different ways of leaving habitat piles on smaller projects on the M5 some 15years ago, they artistically laid brash in lines but again, these meant problems later as they could not mulch down quick enough for the mowing that the original programme promoted!

 

 

 

Hi Pete and both valid good points especially leaving roadside brash and cord...a Chipper is worth it’s wait in gold and has made a tree surgeons job a lot easy over the years and agree with you totally about the work what goes into the production of a Chipper but all I was saying is for what it is it’s just a lot of money and it’s like haveing a car once you have had one you can’t do without it.

[Timbermcpherson]

if you left brush on the side of the road, it would encourage others to fly tip in the same area, 

 

Then in some places there maybe be issues with it being a fire hazard.