Machine Devours Trees in Seconds

[pokerfan]

Because... Progress, I guess.

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/watch-this-gigantic-machine-devour-a-whole-tree-in-seconds-because-wtf/

[NV Whino]

1. Ouch

As if we weren't destroying them fast enough anyway.

[yeoman6987]

3. Holy cow

I never saw anything go down so quickly. We have ANOTHER subdivision going up with 3,000 homes a mile from me in Arnold Maryland. They knocked down all the trees, but not nearly that quick. They probably could have finished that clearing quicker with that machine.

[kentauros]

17. It's not as fast as that gif makes it out.

Either the maker of the gif took out frames or they sped-up the pause rate for each frame. Plus, it's a relatively skinny tree. I don't think you'd see it work nearly as fast on a tree that's a foot in diameter. From the link's video, they also seem to work well as leveling stumps with the ground. Because removing stumps is so difficult, if you just level it, you can then put in whatever that stuff is that some use to speed up the rot. Or just cover it over with your driveway, paving stones, or garden compost.

I could see these being used effectively for those areas of the country (like down here) with heavy infestations of tallow and juniper. And imagine being able to use these things against kudzu!

[CatWoman]

6. well, I'm here to tell you that in Georgia, that machine would be a godsend

in the winter, especially when it ices, trees fall all over the place. especially highways and houses.

same for summer when we have prolonged rainstorms.

georgia is full of pine trees, very tall with small root systems.

they topple over in the blink of an eye.

[enlightenment]

2. Crimey.

I can see some uses - like clearing downed undergrowth (you see that in the video), but it makes a huge mess.

I prefer to let trees stand, if at all possible!

[csziggy]

5. Many of the shots in the video are next to power lines

And near houses. I guess that is more efficient, maybe safer, and definitely much faster than using bucket trucks to trim the limbs and top the trees.

For completely clearing, being able to take the trees down, semi-mulch them and grind the stumps all with the same piece of equipment is very efficient.

I planted a couple of thousand of trees on our farm and let hundreds volunteer without human intervention but there are times when we've needed to clear areas or thin the trees. Having access to an excavator mulcher would be handy.

In our plans for next fall is to thin a stand of trees to make space for more pasture. We thinned that area out 33 years ago, but smaller trees have volunteered and some of the larger trees are too crowded now. It will take a week or two for two guys with chain saws and a tractor to cut the trees and drag them out. Then we'll have to hire a stump grinder to take the stumps down so we can keep it mowed. That excavator mulcher could knock the job out in a day!

[gwheezie]

7. I had trees down after Isabel

Several near the house were leaning one fell on the barn with my horses in it. A guy came out with a forestry mulcher and took about 12 trees down. The trees wre not healthy. They had pine beetles. Left on their own they would have come down anyway and decayed. Basically the mulch did the same thing. The good part was it didn't disturb the soil. It was expensive but less dangerous. However it made a gawd awful racket and debris was flying everywhere. You can rent one. I wound up replanting 30 native trees I got from forestry conservation
After that my neighbor found a guy who logged using oxen. It was so cool to watch. If I had known I would have used him. His oxen were incredible. They worked completely off voice commands. It took weeks but it was very selective logging with minimal damage to the forest. His oxen also are trained to ride and drive. He's camped all over the country with them.

[csziggy]

11. I doubt any company in our small market would have one

That they'd rent out. I'd rather pay the guys to cut and pull the trees out. One of the problems is that there are a lot of slender trees growing close together. We want to leave enough trees to keep that area shaded and there is no room to drop the trees when they are cut.

Last time we thinned, they'd cut the tree at the bottom and it would stand there, held up by the branches intertwined with the trees around it. We ended up attaching a chain to the cut tree trunk and dragging it out from the bottom. Some branches on the surrounding trees were broken but not as many as if we'd tried to top the trees that needed to go.

I wish I knew someone who did white oak basket weaving. Chances are, many of the trees that need to go would give them materials and they could take out trees gradually as they needed for making baskets. I'm not sure anyone in this area still does that skill from tree to basket - all the basket weavers I know buy their materials already prepared and would have not clue how to split the oak:

The trees that need to go are pretty young, very straight and have few branches for the first 15-20 feet so would be nice and clear for making the splits!

[gwheezie]

14. The oxen guy got into very tight spots

My neighbor is as master florist trained in a natural style so when the oxen finished with the trees she thinned, she kept quite a bit if material for her designs. The oxen guy makes his own yokes, shafts and wagons from the trees he harvests.

[csziggy]

25. At one point I was training my stallion to drive

And thought about using him to pull logs out of the woods. But my husband is death with a chainsaw - he kills the chainsaw, not trees or people - and then I had to get a shoulder rebuilt so I could not longer drive a horse.

Since we have until next fall/winter to thin the trees, I may call around to see if I can find someone who would want the wood for something, though they are small for most things.

[enlightenment]

10. Interesting!

Clearly there are good uses for it - it is a bit scary looking though. I was impressed with the skill of the operator in the video.

And I'm a wee bit jealous of your living space (looking out on the concrete jungle . . .).

[csziggy]

13. We lucked out with this place

Bought it over 30 years ago from an estate that needed to be settled. 60 acres of semi-abandoned pig farm with old corn fields, a swamp in the bottom 20 acres, lots of trees and some thick woods.

We let the son of the previous owners take the pigs and all the barbed wire fencing he could pull out of the underbrush. Spent several years cleaning up - one of the sons worked in a restaurant and brought home the organic garbage to feed the pigs, along with whatever got mixed in. There were piles of chipped dishes, buckets of bent flatware, and we still find buried in the clay little plastic packets that say "mayonnaise" or "mustard" on them. We hauled off a dead car and a dead truck. Cleared acres of brush, mowed more acres of old corn stalks and weeds, killed hundreds of cotton rats (with the help of red tailed hawks that hovered overhead to watch when we were mowing and clearing).

Some parts were thick with scrubby oak growing so close together you couldn't see through them and certainly couldn't walk through. That's the parts we thinned thirty years ago. In the wide open areas we planted selected varieties of trees, put in pasture in the open areas, and generally fixed the place up to be a working horse farm. We left the wooded and swampy bottom land undisturbed aside from putting in a wildlife pond. Back in there is a stand of American beech trees - one use to be the biggest American Beech in Florida. It and its companions are listed in the book, Big Trees of Florida - the foresters who put the book together told us it's the only naturally growing stand of large beech they know of in Florida. The other beeches that are larger are specimen trees either planted by humans or sole remnants of stands.

When we were done, the neighborhood got "gentrified" and property values soared. I plan to die on this farm and want my ashes spread on it. After that, I hope it can become a county park if I can manage it in my will. It's a unique piece of land now for this area.

I can't even imagine what it would be like to live in a city. Grew up in a small town, lived in larger towns while in college, and on the farm ever since. I haven't even spent much time in cities since - they just are not pleasant for me.

[gwheezie]

16. My place used to be part of the oldest farm in the county

Pre revolution. Before whites settled here, this road was the major native trail along a tidal river. Things keep coming up out if the ground here also, found an old still in the woods. When I bought the place I was going to clear more land for pasture but there are eagles in my trees so I just rehabbed the overgrown pasture and figured if I needed more animals I'd get goats. I've had up to 30 goats here. They did a good job of clearing out the brush and saplings. My last old nanny goat died over the winter. She was my heart goat. We'd sit on the deck by the pool in the summer and share a beer.

[csziggy]

24. That sounds lovely!

We had a small herd of goats when we first started clearing. But they kept jumping the fences we'd put in for the horses. Then my dog killed one and the other goats ended up on the plantation ten miles to the east (it was all plantation between our place and where the goats went at that time). I got rid of the dog - couldn't trust it with small livestock and we had foals due. But I was not a goat person so I traded them off to someone who was.

[enlightenment]

23. I am genuinely happy for you.

It's clear that while luck was involved, you put in a tremendous amount of effort and heart - and you should feel proud of your accomplishment. My compliments and I hope you are able to sort your estate the way you like . . . when the time comes, of course!

[Cartoonist]

4. Trees or humans?

Trees can get by just fine without humans, but humans will become extinct long before they cut down the last tree, which they will never do. The relation between trees and humans is that of host and parasite.

[hatrack]

8. Cheney probably has a fleet of them in his garage

On the weekends, he goes to undisclosed locations in National Parks and spends a relaxing hour or two "checking them out".

[Tetris_Iguana]

22. ROFLOL

I have to share this one!

[NightWatcher]

9. it'd be a shame if something were to happen to that machine

[Humanist_Activist]

12. What is your problem with this machine? It seems to be a good way to get rid of sick and damaged...

trees in built up neighborhoods, where their are power lines and houses the trees can endanger by falling on them. There might be other issues with the use of the machine I'm not aware of, but from a design perspective, it seems to be able to confine the chippings to going mostly straight down and not posing a danger to others.

[MohRokTah]

15. The machine is really the attachment at the end of a standard crane.

You could attach the device to just about any hydraulic crane from what I say in the video, meaning the height of a tree that can be taken down so quickly could vary based upon the crane used.

[kentauros]

18. That didn't matter from the video, either.

They can use them to cut the tree down, and then grind it up on the ground. The video also showed it mulching already-downed trees as well as brush.

If you're clearing a site for whatever purpose (building, house, roadway) then this could be a boon in some cases. You'll still need to remove the stumps if something requiring load-bearing will be sitting on that spot, but the rest can just be leveled off, flush with the surrounding topsoil

[Terra Alta]

19. this makes me somewhat sad.

I could see how it can be used for some good, but it has the potential to become very, very dangerous for our planet.

[kentauros]

20. I don't see it that way.

It's likely a very expensive piece of machinery, and likely just as expensive to maintain, sharpen, and replace parts as needed. You won't see your average teabagger hick with one of these, wantonly cutting down every tree in sight. It will be used like any other piece of heavy machinery now, whether by the timber industry to clear stumps, or by those businesses contracted to clear land.

Personally, I'd like to see the various state agencies with the responsibility to keep that state's environment protected as using them to clear infestations of unwanted and damaging vegetation. In Texas, that would be Ashe Juniper trees, and Chinese Tallow trees. They choke out the trees we want to keep, the native species, and with the junipers, cause horrible allergies in humans. What's not to like about having a device like this if you could help both the natural environment and the existing human populations, too?

[Travis_0004]

28. Not likely

The machine turns it into harwood mulch which isnt really valuable. The value of the mulch probably wont cover the cost to run the machine so nobody is going to just go to town with it. It will probably be used to cut down trees that were going to be cut down anyway.

[MohRokTah]

21. Just watched the vid again and I wish we had one available for my Illinois village.

Our Ash trees in town are almost all dead (Emerald Ash Borer) and the village simply cannot remove them fast enough. All of these dead trees line the streets and some are very close to houses, creating a dangerous situation especially after the double Derechos moved through two nights ago (four trees down within three blocks of my house, and worse further north).

[krispos42]

26. Faster and safer than some poor slob climbing a tree...

...wearing a harness and dragging a chainsaw up on a lanyard.

[MADem]

27. Assuming a tree has to come down, that's a good-as-any way to do it.

If it's got rot, it's safer to do it that way than to send some poor fellah up to cut off the tree top and work his way down.

I can see where this would do some good.

[gwheezie]

29. I can see why this is upsetting

I lived in 2 rural areas that were quickly developed and the trees killed. However if you have to clear land for any reason this method causes less soil disturbance and you can selectively cut. The state I live in will sell native species trees at a very low cost in bulk through the conservation program.
I don't like destroying trees but Isabel left a mess here. After about 2 years of trees falling on my wires, driveway, barn I gave up. Also the electric co op here does not maintain the right of way along the power lines going to your house. I have 700ft of power lines.
The mulching of the trees to make pasture is not a good idea unless you know every tree you're going to mulch. Cherry and walnut are deadly to horses and the mulch prevents grass growth until it really breaks down and then you have to correct the pH of the soil.
The logging co's here leave a mess when they clear cut although they usually replant.
There are all kinds if forestry mulchers. For small clearings equipment rental co will rent a skid steer with a mulcher attachment. Most contractors know where to rent equipment since many of them don't own all the equipment they need. Every few years I rent a skid steer with a brush hog, rake and grapple attachment to tidy up the place and get things done the tractor can't handle. My husband gave up trying to get me out if the skid steer

[Octafish]

30. What about the things that live in the trees?

Looks like they'd be devoured, too.

[gwheezie]

32. It's deafening

I don't think wildlife hangs around. My issue with clearing large swaths of land is more the destruction of habitat. I was glad waited a few years before initiating my plan of clearing another 10 acres because I wound up not doing it because of the wildlife. I just curtailed my horse habit and started collecting goats. They don't need acres of grass. Mine loved poison ivy and stickers bushes.

[RobertEarl]

31. That's what they used to log the Sahara forests. n/t