View attachment 174968 I just realized that I am pretty the only person that I know of who removes stumps this way. Basically build a fire on it and wait till it gets going then put a squirrel cage fan (basically a miniature carpet dryer) pointing at it. Twice daily you go out with the leaf blower and blow all the ashes out (it will look like it’s out, but it’s not) then throw a good bit of wood in it. Best if it is in large pieces or just a whole 12” long section of trunk.Needs to be kind of dry but not too dry(or it’ll burn up too fast). Just point the fan and let the O2 do its thing. It takes about 3 days and a good bit of unseasoned wood (poplar, pine, etc… the stuff you can’t use in the fireplace) but if you’ve got that then it’s free(maybe $1-2 in electricity). This is it when I started last night (beer for scale): This is like 30 minutes ago tonight: And this is me tonight getting ready for bed: Tomorrow I’ll post finished product… but if you’ve got electricity (or one of those 1000 watt generators that sips gas) and an abundance of free softwood/non-fireplace wood then it’s around $400 cheaper than renting a stump grinder ($320 if you don’t already have the blower fan), at least in my area. I just found it odd than nobody just burnt their stumps. They always drill holes and put potassium nitrate and other stuff in there and let it soak for like 2 years then try and burn them and it never works. Put a fan on it and you can burn it the day you cut it (granted I cut this one in November. Didn’t burn it then because it was the rut and spending the rut burning stumps is just downright retarded)
I’ve been watching multiple videos on this recently, I was considering using the 55 gallon drum over the top method but my stumps are too big. I cut down 3 huge apple trees in my yard, I may give this a go in a couple months or wait until next year.
End result: All that’s left to do is fill it up with dirt. I stopped here because this one is kind of out of the way. If it was in the yard I would’ve probably added some more wood and let it go another day to further burn down some of the bigger roots so it wouldn’t cause a low spot a few years from now.
I'm about to try this on some stumps where I'm building. Looks easy enough and yeah I'm wanting to know what Sota asked too. Ya know, for research and preparedness sake.
Depends… I started it Tuesday morning before work and it was done Thursday evening around sunset… so if you’re trying to pull two back-to-back all nighters and tend it from start to finish I’d say at least 72… that’s a 6 pack at the beginning to get the buzz on and then one per hour to maintain. If you’re going to do it the way I did it… basically just throw a full section of trunk on it before work, another one when you get home from work, and another before bed then an 18-pack ought to do it, since you only need to cover the time between getting home from work and going to bed for a couple days. Probably a little more if buddy’s come over to participate.
