ddhlakebound
Addicted to ArboristSite
I looked at a job today, a cleanup and thinning of a small patch of small to medium sized trees. The property is triangular shaped, 1000' long, and 210' wide at the base of the triangle. The property has a medium density of trees, mostly siberian elm, then wild cherry and hackberry, with a few mulberry, sasafrass, black locust, and cedar mixed in.
Nothing has been touched since the January ice storm, and there is a large amount of debris on the ground, most too large to simply brush hog over. To complicate matters, nearly all of the undergrowth is viney and tangled, and grown thigh high. Its gonna be a nightmare to get everything freed up enough to chip. No burning is allowed, so we cant just push into a pile and light. We can blow the chips onsite, and pile all the block into one big pile there.
Our objective is to clean up all the storm damge, remove badly damaged trees, and clean up the trees that are staying. Remove all ground debris larger than one inch diameter, remove 39 trees smaller than 6", 19 trees 6-12", and one 16". Approximatley 25-30% of the trees are being taken out, and 70-75% being left. Remove all breakage from the largest elm on the section, which is over a fence, and has a lot of breakage. Seven other trees to climb and remove breakage, mostly pretty easy. And another ten man hours budgeted to clean up the remaining trees, they have lots of small broken stuff to clean up with the jerk saw and pruner pole. All the removals cut alap, and sprayed with stump killer.
Our plan is to rent a bobcat for 1-2 days to push all the ground debris clear of the undergrowth. When that's all blocked and chipped, we'll start removing all the marked trees by sections, and taking all the damage off the trees to stay, and cleaning up a section at a time, leaving the whole area ready to mow with ease.
Here's the problem.....$$$....isn't that ALWAYS the problem. This isn't a high priority area for the owner, but they don't want to leave it trashed and becoming more and more overgrown either.
After all my calculations, bobcat rental, chipper time, labor, fuel, etc.....I come up with a price of $3905 to make the area how the owner says he wants. It would have been easily $1000 less if everything on the ground wasnt grown into the viney brush. That price includes a break because its all easy, even if sweaty, buggy, grubby work, and he's been a good customer since we started.
Is 3900 bucks too much to clean up and thin an area that size?
His other option is to bring in a dozer, and demolish everything completely. Then he'd still have that great big pile of dozer debris to deal with, no burning allowed. How much would he spend to get it cleaned up with a dozer, then much more debris hauled off?
Any ideas to be able to get this area cleaned up and mowable, to the owners satisfaction, more efficiently?
How many square feet are in an acre?
Nothing has been touched since the January ice storm, and there is a large amount of debris on the ground, most too large to simply brush hog over. To complicate matters, nearly all of the undergrowth is viney and tangled, and grown thigh high. Its gonna be a nightmare to get everything freed up enough to chip. No burning is allowed, so we cant just push into a pile and light. We can blow the chips onsite, and pile all the block into one big pile there.
Our objective is to clean up all the storm damge, remove badly damaged trees, and clean up the trees that are staying. Remove all ground debris larger than one inch diameter, remove 39 trees smaller than 6", 19 trees 6-12", and one 16". Approximatley 25-30% of the trees are being taken out, and 70-75% being left. Remove all breakage from the largest elm on the section, which is over a fence, and has a lot of breakage. Seven other trees to climb and remove breakage, mostly pretty easy. And another ten man hours budgeted to clean up the remaining trees, they have lots of small broken stuff to clean up with the jerk saw and pruner pole. All the removals cut alap, and sprayed with stump killer.
Our plan is to rent a bobcat for 1-2 days to push all the ground debris clear of the undergrowth. When that's all blocked and chipped, we'll start removing all the marked trees by sections, and taking all the damage off the trees to stay, and cleaning up a section at a time, leaving the whole area ready to mow with ease.
Here's the problem.....$$$....isn't that ALWAYS the problem. This isn't a high priority area for the owner, but they don't want to leave it trashed and becoming more and more overgrown either.
After all my calculations, bobcat rental, chipper time, labor, fuel, etc.....I come up with a price of $3905 to make the area how the owner says he wants. It would have been easily $1000 less if everything on the ground wasnt grown into the viney brush. That price includes a break because its all easy, even if sweaty, buggy, grubby work, and he's been a good customer since we started.
Is 3900 bucks too much to clean up and thin an area that size?
His other option is to bring in a dozer, and demolish everything completely. Then he'd still have that great big pile of dozer debris to deal with, no burning allowed. How much would he spend to get it cleaned up with a dozer, then much more debris hauled off?
Any ideas to be able to get this area cleaned up and mowable, to the owners satisfaction, more efficiently?
How many square feet are in an acre?
