I might have overloaded my wagon a bit.

[customsawyer]

I took a job clearing area for a new horse arena that has some good sized pines on it and a bunch of hardwoods. Well on this job I have to remove to stumps and all that won't burn. This clump of sweetgum has four trees growing out of one root ball so the only way I have a prayer of getting the root ball up is by taking the trees down first and using there weight to help get the root up.



I had to hook the winch from the pickup, use the boom on the dump truck and the hoe on the back-hoe to push this one over after I had dug all the way around the base of the root ball.

[redbeard]

Is that common for sweet gum to grow like that our western red maple will do that once in awhile ive found a few not real common though.

[Peter Drouin]

nice job, a hard one for sure.will be doing things like that when the 3+ feet of snow is gone. but the maple sap is runing and the snow fleas are out spring is comming. again good job. 8) 8)

[Bill Gaiche]

customsawyer, that looks like good place to start a pond. bg

[WDH]

Looks like that you made an awful big hole.  You just like big stuff, don't you  ??? ;D.

[Left Coast Chris]

I had a similuar large root ball on a Calif Black Walnut.   It was growing in river bottom loam with high ground water at about 3.5'.   Any roots that went down had too much water so the tree spread the roots instead of going down.  It took us two days with the backhoe and a 3 ton cum-a-long from the base of another tree to get it out.  The tree was about 40" in diameter at the base but the root ball was about 8' accross.   After we cut the butt log from the stump we dug the soil from the bottom of the root ball and it ended up being about 2' thick.  We then put it on a burn pile for drying during the summer and burning next year.

My conclusion was that root ball removal of larger trees needs a large excavator to be economical.  The backhoe (Case 580SD) simply was not enough.

[wannasaw]

Hey Jake ..I had one of those when we cleared our land but it was a double water oak and the circum was a nice 13'6 hole after but good for water oak it was  fairly shallow... I've knocked down some gums here that made me glad  that they wern't double.Let alone trips or quads. I would have to call Sunbelt.. Nice job as always on the pics. Kudos..

[Dan_Shade]

you coulda left the stump for barrel racing :D

[paul case]

looks pretty hefty jake but i am certian you havent bit off more than you can saw,

peter,
what is a snow flea?
pc

[kderby]

what is a snow flea?

Food for snow snakes?

[Jeff]

That's the kind of rootball you will find here and bigger. We have extremely sandy soil and the tree roots have to go big and go deep.  Trees I have planted take 5 or 6 years it seems before they start growing on top. It takes them that long to develop an adequate root system before anything above the ground starts to take off.   You can turn a garden hose on here bull blast and never have a puddle.

[fishpharmer]

That's no hill for a stepper!! 8)

Or should I say "that's no hole for a stumper!"

Once I had the bright idea of digging up a BIG pecan stump with a JD 310 backhoe.  After several hours digging and trying to pull it out, I conceded.  Ended up digging a deep hole right next to it, pushing it down into it and covering it up.  Gravity was my friend. 8)

[customsawyer]

I am working on some more pics to show you.

[customsawyer]

Here they are.







It would have been safer to just cut the trees down first than go after the root ball but I knew if I did I would never get the root ball up. The white strap in the tree is got my F250 pulling with a 16500 LBS winch going through a snatch block.

[SwampDonkey]

I hope you get a bit of a break on the stump sizes because that looks costly. Stumps aren't too bad around here for land clearing. But that's only because the wood is small because nobody likes to let a tree grow very big before they are in there cutting sticks. ;D That sure is a nasty root ball.

Sometimes as Chief Brody said, "We're going to need a bigger boat". ;D ;)

[bandmiller2]

Swamp maple clumps are very common around here, someone in the past has cut the tree and it suckers out and grows not bad for firewood but poor for good sawlogs.Frank C.

[SwampDonkey]

Red maple clumps are common here to, but they are not hard to remove. I've (dad) had land cleared before for farmland. ;)

[WDH]

How is the rest of the land clearing going?

[barbender]

Basswood tends to clump and make big rootballs, but they usually aren't too tough to get out. Gnarliest stumps I've dug out were hard maple, just one stem but man those things are well attached to the earth

[fishpharmer]

Jake, I see an excavator in your future. 8)

[clww]

Be very careful winching that 16.5 doubled through a snatch block. How thick is the cable? I straightened a winch hook a few months ago with my 9.5K winch running through 3 snatch blocks run together for a heavy, uphill skid. Luckily, I didn't break the cable. : Part of the reason I added an extra 15 feet of cable on the winch controller. I stand way off to the side and throw a moving blanket over the cable under tension.

[Brucer]

what is a snow flea?

They're real. They are little tiny fleas that hatch all at once in enormous quantities. Around here we usually see them in mid March when there is lots of snow on the ground but daytime temperatures are around 5 C (40 F). They actually make the snow look like it's covered with soot.

As far as I know, they're harmless to humans and critters.

[paul case]

 i thought it might be some kinda joke!  pc

[customsawyer]

Danny the clean up is moving right along. The trouble I am having is that I don't have anything left at the house to move logs around with.

[Peter Drouin]

No joke .PC tiny fleas  ;)