Tree Roots

I've got some shallow rooted conifer roots, left over from some 8 foot leylandii which have recently been taken down; anybody tried pulling them out with a chain attached to a towing bracket on a 2.5 Tdi Discovery or similar?

Once saw a farmer doing this to some old hedge roots in a Defender, with excellent results and have seen tractors pulling them out, but someone mentioned to me that they had pulled a couple of entire small conifers out with a 4x4 ( he drilled through the trunk near the base, put a chain and bar through the hole, and just dragged away quietly).

May be a daft idea, but thought I'd ask the experts on here.

Tom

Reply to
Tweedswood
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Reply to
Paul Coley

Make sure you don't have a drop plate or if you do its well braced. I saw someone twist the rear cross member on a series 3 pulling out a tree root.

Jon

Reply to
Jonnyboy

Depending on the ground it isn't hard to do it by hand. I removed 4 at my parents house one morning. The trick is to cut the trunk to about 6 foot high and give yourself a lever. Big round with a spade and they come out OK (probably not so easy in clay!).

The problem with towing them out is that you can build a lot of tension into the rope / chain, and when the root lets go you could find it heading towards you at great speed. You could put a catch rope on it to stop it I guess, or make sure that the bit you are pulling is too big to fly too far.

If you are going to drill through, I'd suggest not doing it too close to the ground for the reasons above. Too high and you will just break the trunk though.

Tim Hobbs

'58 Series 2 '77 101FC Ambulance '95 Discovery V8i

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Reply to
Tim Hobbs

Bruce said to make sure the ground is wet where the roots are coming out, hose it down and give it time to soak in, but make sure where your landie is going to be is fairly dry. Shouldn't be to hard if they are fairly shallow.

Reply to
Nikki

Also take it slowly. Bruce said he'd try by hand first.

Reply to
Nikki

No, but it sounds fun.

Exercise caution - remember there is a lot of force involved, which can do you or anybody else looking on a lot of damage.

I'd be surprised if you could do much damage to the Disco.

Reply to
David French

steve the grease

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Reply to
R L Driver

Don't see why not. Fully grown trees seem to come out of the ground very easily with a strop, when being used as an anchor for winching by clueless wannabe adventurers and tosspot newbie offroaders.

Reply to
Mother

Just Pay Someone to dig them out !!

Reply to
Igundwane

I don't recommend a chain. There's no give in it and that can easily lead to fixing bolts snapping.

Reply to
David G. Bell

(snip) I've done this. Ignorant prat that I was - I used thick blue poly rope. I was towing with a small Fergie tractor. When the tree stump came out it flew at enormous speed (really - I didn't see it until it hit me) and hit me on the side of the head. I have never been hit so hard by anything. It knocked me right off the tractor and made a very big mess of the side of my head. Hospital job :-( Luckily The stump hit me with a flat bit - there were spikes where the roots had snapped - if that had hit.. it would have been head kebab!)

Moral...DON'T EVER USE ROPE! (I wouldn't use cable either - if it does break it will take your head off -literally. Chain is the thing for the job.

As previous poster said - cut them off high, use as a lever.

HTH

Chris floaty thing

Reply to
Chris (floaty thing) Albania

My brother in law had exactly your problem and solved it in exactly the way you suggest (200tdi Disco).

HTH

M
Reply to
McBad

I've removed a couple of trees with my RR.

First one was a 'live' tree, about a foot trunk diameter, that had been reduced to a height of about 8 foot. Double wrapped a strop as high up as I could for max. leverage. Put the RR in lowbox and pulled slowly away. Tree leant over and made root-popping noises. Stopped pulling and used axe to cut roots that had now been uncovered - repeat several times and tree falls gracefully over without hurting anybody, or even any small furry creatures that may have been lurking nearby.

Second was a stump that had been in my landlords front garden for about 10 yrs. Dug under the thickest root, attached strop and pulled - most dissapointing, 'cos the stump had shallow roots and just popped out :(

Whatever you do, take it steady, it's not a race - use enough momentum but not too much!!

Regards,

Horse

Reply to
horse

| Whatever you do, take it steady, it's not a race - use enough | momentum but not too much!! | | Regards, | | Horse

Plus, you can often achieve as much by pushing as you can by pulling.

I took out several trees from my last house by simply pushing them over with my S3.

Mark

Reply to
Mark Pewsey

Don't you mean glorified light switch that lets other drivers know that you plan to stop in the next mile?!

Reply to
Nikki

Ah, I see you're getting quite used to the new member of the family then?

But hey, at least it's less painfull than giving birth I guess :-)

Reply to
Mother

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