The Pine tree removal project is now half way home. Our goal for the project was 50 trees but we managed to cut down and process 81 trees in 13 working days. We hired a tree contractor to do all the climbing and falling of the trees and grinding of the stumps. Our staff did most of the chipping of branches and site clean up. I can't believe how much material is generated from chipping one Pine tree! I now understand how trees catch on fire so easily. The branches going through the chipper are super dry and produce a constant dust cloud.
In the video above you see we built a box mounted to our 4 yard dump trailer to shoot the chips into. I estimate the trailer holds 6-7 yards of chips and it takes 1 1/2 to 2 trailers of chips per tree. 81 trees with an average of 9 yards of chips each equals 729 yards of chips! Luckily we were able to dump the chips on site and not have to pay to have them hauled away. With all the brush and branches chipped, the next step is to get the logs and cut ends off the course. The logs are moved out to the North end of the course adjacent to the 4th tee where they are picked up by a log truck and taken to a saw mill for processing.
Josh runs our excavator and loads a log onto the log trailer.
Andrew is shown connecting a chain to our loader to haul it to the log pile.
The log hauling process is slow but it's the only way to get 32' long logs off the course in one piece.
Logs are stockpiled by the 4th tee awaiting pick up.
The log truck enters through the gate from NE 8th street and self loads.
This load of logs weighed 34 tons. The mill is only paying $25 per ton for Pine logs so after we pay for trucking to the mill we net about $400 per load. At least we don't have to pay to get rid of them.
There are many parts of each tree that are not long enough to go to the mill. This pile in the upper parking lot is less than 1/3 of all the cut ends that we have to find a new home for.
Once the cut ends and logs are off the course we will have to pick up all the stump grindings. This is also a slow process. We can scoop most of the grindings out of each hole with our excavator but there is still some hand shoveling that has to be done. Each stump generates 2-3 yards of grindings so we generate another 200 yards of material to haul away.
While the tree contractor was here I asked them to do some trimming of the trees on along the entry road. Branches were hanging down so low that it was hard to see cars coming around the corner by the driving range tee.
We also removed some plants that had grown too tall and were blocking the view of oncoming cars.
We will be working daily to get the tree project done and the course in good condition for spring play.
See you on the course!
Steve Kealy
Golf Course Superintendent
