Wood chipper rental help please?

[CristaMeyer]

I am volunteer with the Houston Dog Park Association. We need to further chip some ground cover that the city put down in one of the parks. What was laid are primarily shards, up to 3" approximately in width and up to several feet long. Thankfully there are some smaller pieces too!

The problem with this "mulch" is that it is sharp. Dog's are getting injured as well as sick when they chew on the wood. We have an offer of some $$ and volunteer labor from Nutro to improve the park and would like to use the offer in part to fix our mulch issue. What we have been hearing so far is that the wood cannot be chipped down further. In researching wood chippers, it certainly appears that it can be done and that we should be able to rent something for a day to do this. We would be raking up the mulch, running through the chipper and re-spreading it.

I guess what I need is confirmation that yes, this is not a problem, as well as recommendations on the appropriate chipper type and where to rent it from. I have an email out to Donald's Chipper Rentals who says he rents Liberty equip here in Houston and those machines certainly look like they could handle it. I've also seen a DEK 14 hp that looks like it could do it but don't know where I could rent one. Sunbelt Rentals has a Rayco and 2 Vermeer models (all disk) that look like they could do the job. I've not been by HD or Lowe's yet.

Thanks for any input ya'll can give me!

 

[rarefish383]

What you need is a small tub grinder, that's what they use to make the mulch you get from the garden center.It would be very hard to feed rough chips through a brush chipper and it would ruin the blades. The longer pieces could be fed through but the rakings would have dirt and small stones and other debree that is not good for the chipper. I know a company that builds wooden pallets and they have a small tub grinder they use to grind all of their scraps, it works great. Unfortunately, I have never seen one at a rental center. You may be able to find someone that would come in and grind for you. Good luck, Joe.

 

[Hillbilly3995]

My chipper is only 10 horse but it has a flail on the backside for mulching, something like that would work but it would have to be much larger than mine as my 10 HP has instruction to not put anything larger than diameter of 1/2" into in the flail hammers.

 

[S Mc]

Rarefish is right, Crista. A full size chipper will have problems "re-chipping" the chips. Although Morbark makes a top load (or at least did), which would feed ok (better than a conventional load chipper), the problem with the dirt and rocks would be the same.

You need, as Hillbilly pointed out, something with flail hammers. I have a garden mulcher, a Tomahawk, that I use to rechip chips for decorative top dressing, or to mulch up my garden debris that has dirt and root balls. They are gravity fed and so you just shovel in the debris to be chipped.

The down side for a large project is the time involved...this is a slow process.

But in calling around to rental yards or volunteers who may have something...ask for a "flail hammer mulcher with gravity feed". That will be your best bet.

Sylvia

 

[treemandan]

My chipper is only 10 horse but it has a flail on the backside for mulching, something like that would work but it would have to be much larger than mine as my 10 HP has instruction to not put anything larger than diameter of 1/2" into in the flail hammers.

Interesting. Got pics of this chipper?

 

[treemandan]

I am volunteer with the Houston Dog Park Association. We need to further chip some ground cover that the city put down in one of the parks. What was laid are primarily shards, up to 3" approximately in width and up to several feet long. Thankfully there are some smaller pieces too!

The problem with this "mulch" is that it is sharp. Dog's are getting injured as well as sick when they chew on the wood. We have an offer of some $$ and volunteer labor from Nutro to improve the park and would like to use the offer in part to fix our mulch issue. What we have been hearing so far is that the wood cannot be chipped down further. In researching wood chippers, it certainly appears that it can be done and that we should be able to rent something for a day to do this. We would be raking up the mulch, running through the chipper and re-spreading it.

I guess what I need is confirmation that yes, this is not a problem, as well as recommendations on the appropriate chipper type and where to rent it from. I have an email out to Donald's Chipper Rentals who says he rents Liberty equip here in Houston and those machines certainly look like they could handle it. I've also seen a DEK 14 hp that looks like it could do it but don't know where I could rent one. Sunbelt Rentals has a Rayco and 2 Vermeer models (all disk) that look like they could do the job. I've not been by HD or Lowe's yet.

Thanks for any input ya'll can give me!

The stuff sounds like it came outta the municipalities dull ass chipper or something like that. My stuff comes out nice, sure there are some twigs and unchipped debrris that gets tossed in the back but mostly its nice cause the thing is working as it should.

 

[Hillbilly3995]

Interesting. Got pics of this chipper?

Sure how about this

 

[treemandan]

Sure how about this

Oh for crying out loud! I thought you said " chipper".

But I am impressed to learn those have hammers.

 

[banshee67]

trying to feed mulch through a chipper sounds pretty dangerous, for the operators and the machine

 

[Hillbilly3995]

Oh for crying out loud! I thought you said " chipper".

But I am impressed to learn those have hammers.

I would've thought the 10 HP was your first indicator
it will only honestly grind a two inch limb but its a pretty good little machine,
and I am not a professional arborist.

 

[ponyexpress976]

mackissic chipper

I have an SC183 mackissic chipper that I do the same thing with. Mine will handle up to 1.5" on the flail hammers and has different size screens to limit the output size. It's not a tub grinder but it gets the job done...like said before this is a labor intensive process to do it this way. Call every arborist in the phone book and see if they can get you a lead on a tub grinder. Maybe they will do it if you offer them some advertising space?

 

[Frank Boyer]

How much area are you talking about? Raking up, shredding and respreading a large area would take a lot of hand labor.

You might try a 4 WD tractor with a flail mower. Mine chews small stuff up pretty good. I have a 27 HP Kubota with a 5' flail mower.

Have you contacted local tree services to get finer chopped stuff for a top coat?

 

[TreEmergencyB]

vermeer in my area rents a mini tub grinder and mini track loader combo that i bet would be just the trick for you