Those costs are sky-high, and a man can only do so much. You may have to get a paper route to finance this. haha. No, but those are prices that I just can't imagine. Goodness gracious me.
The neighbours who want the wood from the hedges came this afternoon and spent hours chain sawing the trunks into fire size lengths. Saved me a massive amount of work. I had a go at another part of the hedge. Removed the lower branches and as much soil as I could from round the base. Then I pushed and pulled and it came out of the ground easily. Big help if that will work on the others. Other neighbour said that he did not mind what kind of fence we put up between us, so ranch style would be the cheapest. Excellent. Still got to get rid of tons of conifer trimmings though.
Even better is that she wants all the logs from the next stretch of conifer as well. I may have to cut that up for her myself though.
She will have to store the conifer wood for a couple of years before using it. The resin it releases can block the chimney. I think the amount of storage space she has may be a problem with the quantity of logs we are producing at the moment. There will be even more when and if we take out the back hedge which is getting on for 60 feet long.
Made a start on removing the conifer hedge. The stumps are much easier to move if I leave a good section of the trunk in place to use as a lever. This is how far I have got so far.
Interesting Palustris. My family has a bunch of old scotch pines that are nearing the end of their life span. We were discussing removing them & were told to cut the trunks a good 5 feet off the ground, then just use a tractor to bulldoze the trunk & roots out. Great tip.
Generally speaking Conifers have fibrous roots rather than a long tap root. All I have done so far is to dig round the tree base, expose the thickest roots, cut them with a pruning saw and then rock the trunk until either the rest of the roots snap or they are exposed enough to cut.
The conifer hedge is now removed. The last stumps were taken out today. All bar one came out easily, there is always one is there not? It just had a lot of big roots which needed cutting and multiple stems on top which made it very heavy. We managed. Now all we need is a fence.
Concrete posts, concrete base boards topped by 5 foot wooden fencing. Not sure what kind that will be until we get prices. Probably the cheapest sort though. Still got to get rid of this lot though.
I haven't read every post in this thread but about all I can say is "WOW"!! That hedging was sure something and the costs - again WOW - sky high.
There is now a bit less conifer by the gate. We managed to cut up the trunks and put the logs out of the way behind the Summer House. Neighbours can have them when they need them. Took two bulk bags to the re-cycling and shredded a lot of dead stuff. Boss cut up and dealt with the Holly stems from the self seeded ones which infested the hedge. With any luck we should get a fair number of trips down to the re-cycling place over the next few days, depending on the weather.
4 more trips to the re-cycling place today. With any luck we should be able to complete the job tomorrow. Had to stop as the queue to get back into town was over half a mile long. No idea why. Fence man came. The fence is 41 feet long so he is going to work out a price for us. The other company we tried have not got back to us at all.
