Excavator to remove pine tree stumps? Good Size?

[gwisejr]

Good morning,

I'm looking to rent an excavator to remove up to 17 stumps. They are from ~13" up to 26" diameter. A local rental place that I've used before has a Kubota KX40 – 40HP with a thumb and the option of either a 12", 24" or 36" bucket. I don't expect to get all 17 out in one day but hope to get at least around 5-6 out in the area that I want to level and build a barn on.

Can I get any recommendations on this project? Is that excavator too small for the job, if not, what would be the best best size bucket? Logs have already been moved and some milled so the area is clear.

Thanks.





 

[btulloh]

It all comes down to how much time you want to spend.  I think I'd go for the 24" bucket.  Do you have experience with a hoe?  

[Jack S]

If you have to rent a machine consider a stump grinder instead and I mean a decent size one. The stumps will be done with,and a lot less mess to clean up. How do I know? I bought a 25 hp vermeer grinder a few years ago to help clean up my property and it has worked out well.    Jack

[gwisejr]

I've never used a excavator, used a skidsteer, tractor, ect... so I understand that there will be a learning curve. My expectations are to rent for a day, see how many I can remove, mainly to clear my build area, then budget time & $$ to do the remainder. I've got a lot more trees to remove, so the remaining stumps will have some company for a while.

As to using a stump grinder, I might do that for the other stumps not around the future barn perimeter but I'm concerned about the holes that would be caused by the decay. Just trying to figure out the amount of work that will be involved periodically fixing that as opposed to just ripping them out day one.

[Jack S]

removing the stump will leave a big hole, grinding the stump a small hole really less of a problem and a lot less fill to replace. The grindings get hauled away for mulch in the woods.  My experience  Ive ground out 100-130 anywhere from 2 inch saplings to 30 inch pine stumps. really easy and no mess.  And yes I used to use a backhoe  A lot more work and mess to clean up. A 13 inch with a decent rental 1/2 hour. 26 inch  maybe hour depending on the machine and experience. The size of the machine is the dictator.    

[chevytaHOE5674]

A 26" stump with no tree on it for leverage with a 40hp excavator is going to take a long while.  

I would price out hiring somebody with bigger machine like a 20ton. It may seem more expensive but a good operator can remove those stumps pretty quick compared to days with the rental kubota.

[btulloh]

It takes a while to get productive with a hoe.  The general rule is 40-50 hours.  Rent one for a day and see how it goes.  

Settling from stump decay is a consideration when grinding for sure.  

X2 on hiring someone.  Probably the cheapest solution, except you won't get to try your hand with an excavator.  Maybe that's for different project if your goal is get the site ready for your barn.

[Resonator]

The big issue with using a mini excavator to remove stumps is weight. With a machine under 10,000 lbs., you will have your hands full breaking bigger stumps free, and wrestling them out of the hole. I would consider getting a quote from a contractor with a big excavator to dig those stumps out, and that has a dozer to regrade the dirt for a future building. 

[Jack S]

I don't understand the issue with stump decay? The stump is gone and you have a small pile of grindings  outside the hole you made to clean up and haul away. Taking a stump out with the hoe , now what are you going to do with it? 

[Southside]

You need a bigger hoe for that job. I have a 52,000 Kobelco and would not want something much smaller for work like that. It's too time consuming and frustrating trying to move those big, dirt filled stumps out of the way otherwise.

As for as stumps rotting away and leaving man eating holes. Ask yourself, have you EVER walked across a piece of ground that was clear cut and found a single, rotten, stump hole? It does not happen, wood rots at the ground / air line, not above it and not below it, at least not in any appreciable time. 

Grinding away those stumps will give you just as good of a finished product without having to fill the hole digging them up leaves and dealing with the resulting ground settling for a couple of years. 

[gspren]

  The few that I dug with a back hoe I borrowed was fun and wasn't costing me much so with some advice from the owner I cut off as close as I could then after digging around the sides and ripping the stump out I made the hole about 3' deeper and put the stump back in upside down then refilled. He told me with 3' of dirt on top they won't rot and 10 years later I still don't have holes, time consuming but fun since I wasn't paying by the hour.

[btulloh]

IF the stumps aren't under a slab, grinding makes sense.  If and when it settles, a little fill is an easy thing.

[thecfarm]

I suppose rocks in not a problem? If I dug out a stump,I would have a pile or rocks to deal with. Might even find one as big as a car too. When the house was built a big oak stump was dug out. I hauled that off into the woods. It is still there. Seem like stumps last much longer than the wood does.

[LAZERDAN]

A 26" stump with no tree on it for leverage with a 40hp excavator is going to take a long while.  

I would price out hiring somebody with bigger machine like a 20ton. It may seem more expensive but a good operator can remove those stumps pretty quick compared to days with the rental kubota.

    This Quote you can take to the Bank.    Your money will be well spent on a good operator, 
  
    Lazerdan

[Ljohnsaw]

I think this tree was about 30".


 

   I own a SkyTrac that is 26,000 pounds.  I used the forks and my little backhoe to snap roots.  I've done a LOT of work with my SkyTrac and know how to abuse it to its full potential.  It still took several hours to push it over.


 
and then had a ton of rock to deal with.  Once I separated the stump from the tree, I had a hard time moving the stump - it was heavy!  Go big and hire it out wherever you need it GONE for your foundation.  Elsewhere, I'd grind it.

[Iwawoodwork]

I have a Komatsu pc60  (abt 16000lbs) an a Hitachi ex50 ( abt 12000 lbs) and yes either can dig the stumps but will be slow, also get the narrowest bucket you can for digging around the stump to cut off the roots,  if possible a ripper tooth would be a good accessory to have with it.  It also depends on what specie your trees are and the soil they are rooted in. The hardest for me to dig on the hillside property in the south end of the Willamette Valley is the oak.  

[Al_Smith]

As a matter of fact I'm in the process  of removing two 18" maple stumps ,below grade .It's been a general pain because all I have is a 1954 Oliver crawler that weighs about 10,000 pounds and 34 HP .It takes cutting the buttress roots and about half way through the stump before I can snap it off with the dozer .I have to have it below grade because of laying down a stone pad for a shipping container .A stump grinder certainly would have been a better option in hind sight .I've about wore out half of a chainsaw chain cutting in dirt .Not good but no other option in this case .

[jdonovan]

I just finished a project building a 2000 foot road through a forest, and clearing for a house and drain-field. I did most of the work with a 14k excavator. The last little bit a rented a 45,000 lb machine. 

I got more done in 6 hours on the 45k machine than I did in 6 months with the 14k machine. The difference was beyond comprehension. Stumps that I would have dug around for 3 hours with the little machine were pulled out with a single scoop. The really big stumps took 1-2 buckets on each side, and then I was able to dislodge them and lift them out.

With the smaller machines you don't have the power to snap bigger roots up next to the root ball so you have dig further from the stump to get to a size you can break. This leads to a HUGE root ball full of dirt, that is very heavy. Assume you will need to dig a hole 5 times bigger than the stump to get to small enough roots you can cut. Yes, that 26" stump you'll make a 10 foot wide hole getting the stump out, at least, maybe even bigger. 

grinding - Any stump that is under where the building is going needs to have the stump completely removed, and the hole refilled and compacted. Or else there will be settlement there, and the foundation/slab will loose its support, and crack, or worse, collapse into the hole. Anything thats outside the building perimeter can be ground. Depending on where you live, and how well things rot there, you may be in for the next 20 years those old holes will continue to sink and every few years you will need to put some fill in to level them out.

You need a plan for all your stumps. Many will be too heavy for the 10k mini-ex to lift. So where are you going to put them, and how are you getting them there?

If you already owned the machine, I'd say go for it, but understand that it is going to take a while. Where you don't own the machine, and have no experience on heavy equipment, it really sounds like a job you should hire out. 

[Old Greenhorn]

I have been following this one since it started and I have to laugh a little. I wish I had something mechanical to help me. I have a dozen or so small stumps, maybe 20 actually, that are around the mill. I flush cut them last year, but now with traffic they are poking up. SO I started to remove them, by hand. I just nibbles away. They are only hemlock (sprawling roots, no tap root)and only about 10" diameter, but they fight hard. Any small machine would get these all out in a hour or two.
 Rock on guys, I envy you.

[warren46]

Back when I was just a lad a few stumps like you describe required a few sticks that came from DuPont.  I suspect in this day and age the practice is discouraged but we did not have any 45K excavators.

[gwisejr]

I appreciate everyone's comments. I wish I could do old style like Warren46 said, that would be fun but neighbors and especially the ones with livestock might no like it.. Along with the sheriff.  Oh Well,,, :(. I think that I will try out the excavator for the couple of stumps that I need to get out from the barn foot print. The others I will probably just grind down as many suggested. 

Thanks all.

[Al_Smith]

Back in the day,1960's just about anybody could buy Nobel's mixture of nitric acid and glycerine in a media if diatomaceous earth made famous by DuPont.
As such it was widely used .Back then as a teenager from afar I've seen good "powder men " lift an oak stump about 4 feet in the air just as slick as a whistle. I've also seen the aftermath of what happens if they over charge .Shatters a lot of windows blows mud a long ways away .I learned enough to know enough I don't know enough to ever delve into it nor do I want to .  

[Al_Smith]

Over the years I've popped out little stumps using a D4 Cat.If the whole tree is still attached maybe up to 18" .Just a stump maybe 12" hard wood depending .Still leaves a healthy hole to deal with .
My favorite stump story is an oak I pulled over with the old Cat .It was a 3 footer near a barn ,cable,chainsaw ,pull crash .My other buddy dug it loose with a 410 JD back hoe using a ripping tooth.Left a hole the size of a bomb crater ,about 10 feet across and 4-5 feet deep .They had a hard time dragging it with a 730 John Deere .
I left my old Oliver OC 6 and the owner of the property would saturate it with diesel fuel and lay a match to it and every few days roll it around using my crawler .Took him all summer before it was all burned to ashes .Oak is tough to deal with in a case like this .

[gspren]

I left my old Oliver OC 6 and the owner of the property would saturate it with diesel fuel and lay a match to it and every few days roll it around using my crawler .

Dang Al, when I first read this I thought he was torching your Oliver. :D

[SwampDonkey]

If it were me I would hire it. In fact, no one around these parts would ever have one to rent anyway. None that I've seen. The guy I had here last year dug 3 foundations and ripped up 6 hardwood stumps, loaded the mess on a dump truck and was gone in one day. None of them monster stumps. Except the year before he removed a 36" rock maple stump, not much of a hole to that at all for such huge tree. :D Heck tree stumps are part of all the forest roads up this way if your afraid of sink holes. Buried under the road bed, ditch material on top. Best forest road you can build is with excavator. No big mountains of dirt pushed up into your woods to climb over. Nice firm road on the wettest fall season you can imagine. Sand and rock material, but not a clay road.