Wood Chipping Near Me

Wood Chipping Near Me

Woodchips are small- to medium-sized pieces of wood formed by cutting or chipping larger pieces of wood such as trees, branches, logging residues, stumps, roots, and wood waste.

Woodchips, with hand for scale

Woodchips may be used as a biomass solid fuel and are raw material for producing wood pulp. They may also be used as an organic mulch in gardening, landscaping, and ecosystem restoration; in bioreactors for denitrification; and as a substrate for mushroom cultivation.

The process of making woodchips is called wood chipping and is done using a wood chipper. The types of woodchips formed following chipping is dependent on the type of wood chipper used and the material from which they are made. Woodchip varieties include: forest chips (from forested areas), wood residue chips (from untreated wood residues, recycled wood and off-cuts), sawing residue chips (from sawmill residues), and short rotation forestry chips (from energy crops).

Raw materials

The raw materials of woodchips can be pulpwood, waste wood, and residual wood from agriculture, landscaping, logging, and sawmills. Woodchips can also be produced from remaining forestry materials including tree crowns, branches, unsaleable materials or undersized trees.

Wood chipper

Forestry operations provide the raw materials needed for woodchip production. Almost any tree can be converted into woodchips, however, the type and quality of the wood used to produce woodchips depends largely on the market. Softwood species, for instance, tend to be more versatile for use as woodchips than hardwood species because they are less dense and faster growing.

Production

A wood chipper is a machine used for cutting wood into smaller pieces (chips). There are several types of wood chippers, each having a different use depending on the type of processing the woodchips will undergo.

Pulp and paper industry

Woodchips used for chemical pulp must be relatively uniform in size and free of bark. The optimum size varies with the wood species. It is important to avoid damage to the wood fibers as this is important for the pulp properties. For round wood it is most common to use disk chippers. A typical size of the disk is 2.0–3.5 m in diameter, 10–25 cm in thickness and weight is up to 30 tons. The disk is fitted with 4 to 16 knives and driven with motors of ½ –2 MW. Drum chippers are normally used for wood residuals from saw mills or other wood industry.

Methods of conveyance

There are four potential methods to move woodchips: pneumatic, conveyor belt, hopper with direct chute, and batch system (manual conveyance).

Types of wood chippers

Disk

A disk wood chipper features a flywheel made of steel and chopping blades with slotted disks. The blades slice through the wood as the material is fed through the chute. Knives located in the throat of the chipper cuts the wood in the opposite direction. The design is not as energy efficient as other styles but produces consistent shapes and sizes of woodchips.

Drum

A drum wood chipper has a rotating parallel-sided drum attached to the engine with reinforced steel blades attached in a horizontal direction. Wood is drawn into the chute by gravity and the rotation of the drum where it is broken up by the steel blades. The drum type is noisy and creates large uneven chips but are more energy efficient than the disk type.

Screw-type

A screw-type wood chipper contains a conical, screw-shaped blade. The blade rotation is set parallel to the opening so wood is pulled into the chipper by the spiral motion. Screw-type, also called high-torque rollers, are popular for residential use due to being quiet, easy to use and safer than disk and drum types.

Applications

Woodchips are used primarily as a raw material for technical wood processing. In industry, processing of bark chips is often separated after peeling the logs due to different chemical properties.

Wood pulp

Only the heartwood and sapwood are useful for making pulp. Bark contains relatively few useful fibers and is removed and used as fuel to provide steam for use in the pulp mill. Most pulping processes require that the wood be chipped and screened to provide uniform sized chips.

Mulch

Woodchips are also used as landscaping and garden mulch, for water conservation, weed control, and reducing and preventing soil erosion. Woodchips when used as a mulch are at least three inches thick. It has a mixed reputation in gardening.

It has been promoted for use in habitat restoration projects. As the radial chipped wood decomposes it improves the soil structure, permeability, bioactivity, and nutrient availability of the soil.

Playground surfacing

Woodchips do not meet American Society for Testing and Materials standards for use as playground surfacing material, and as of 2011 are illegal to use as playground surfacing in the US, not being ADA-approved according to US department of Justice guidelines.

Barbecuing

Woodchips can also be used to infuse flavor and enhance the smoky taste to barbecued meats and vegetables. Several different species of wood can be used depending on the type of flavor wanted. For a mild, sweet fruity flavor, apple wood can be used while hickory gives a smoky, bacon-like flavor. Other different types of wood used are cherry, mesquite and pecan.

Denitrifying woodchip bioreactor

Woodchips can be loaded into a ‘denitrifying woodchip bioreactor’ which has been used for several decades as an emerging biotechnology to treat agricultural wastewater by removing nitrates. It is a subsurface system where denitrification by micro-organisms utilizing a carbon source (as electron donor) reduces the nitrate into a harmless nitrogen gas. Denitrifying woodchip bioreactor have a low construction and operational costs with a comparatively long lifespan going up to 15 years. The interest in such a technique has grown in recent years and has expanded into the mining industry.

A 2013 experiment showed that after 70 days of startup, a woodchip pile loaded with liquid pig manure at 5 L/m2/day removed an average of 90% of nitrate after one month. However, if the environmental conditions do not support complete denitrification, undesirable greenhouse gas such as nitrous oxide gas and methane could be produced.

Fuel

Woody chips left for drying before transport to industrial off-takers in Namibia. Woodchips have been traditionally used as solid fuel for space heating or in energy plants to generate electric power from renewable energy. The main source of forest chips in Europe and in most of the countries [which?] have been logging residues. It is expected that the shares of stumps and round wood will increase in the future. As of 2013 in the EU, the estimates for biomass potential for energy, available under current 2018 conditions including sustainable use of the forest as well as providing wood to the traditional forest sectors, are: 277 million m3, for above ground biomass and 585 million m3 for total biomass.

The newer fuel systems for heating use either woodchips or wood pellets. The advantage of woodchips is cost, the advantage of wood pellets is the controlled fuel value. The use of woodchips in automated heating systems, is based on a robust technology.

The size of the woodchips, moisture content, and the raw material from which the chips are made are particularly important when burning wood chips in small plants. Unfortunately, there are not many standards to decide the fractions of woodchip.
The energy content in one cubic meter is normally higher than in one cubic meter wood logs, but can vary greatly depending on moisture. The moisture is decided by the handling of the raw material. If the trees are taken down in the winter and left to dry for the summer (with teas in the bark and covered so rain can’t reach to them), and is then chipped in the fall, the wood chips’ moisture content will be approximately 20–25%. The energy content, then, is approximately 3.5–4.5kWh/kg (~150–250 kg/cubic meter).
Coal power plants have been converted to run on woodchips, which is fairly straightforward to do, since they both use an identical steam turbine heat engine, and the cost of woodchip fuel is comparable to coal.

Solid biomass is an attractive fuel for addressing the concerns of the energy crisis and climate change, since the fuel is affordable, widely available, close to carbon neutral and thus climate-neutral in terms of carbon dioxide (CO2), since in the ideal case only the carbon dioxide which was drawn in during the tree’s growth and stored in the wood is released into the atmosphere again.

Waste and emissions

Compared to the solid waste disposal problems of coal and nuclear fuels, woodchip fuel’s waste disposal problems are less grave; in a study from 2001 fly ash from woodchip combustion had 28.6 mg cadmium/kg dry matter. Compared to fly ash from burning of straw, cadmium was bound more heavily, with only small amounts of cadmium leached. It was speculated as a form of cadmium oxide, cadmium silicate (CdSiO3); authors noted that adding it to agricultural or forest soils in the long-term could cause a problem with accumulation of cadmium.

Like coal, wood combustion is a known source of mercury emissions, particularly in northern climates during winter. The mercury is both gaseous as elemental mercury (especially when wood pellets are burned) or mercury oxide, and solid PM2.5 particulate matter when untreated wood is used.

When wood burning is used for space heating, indoor emissions of 1, 3-butadiene, benzene, formaldehyde and acetaldehyde, which are suspected or known carcinogenic compounds, are elevated. The cancer risk from these after exposure to wood smoke is estimated to be low in developed countries.

Certain techniques for burning woodchips result in the production of bio char – effectively charcoal – which can be either utilized as charcoal, or returned to the soil, since wood ash can be used as a mineral-rich plant fertilizer. The latter method can result in an effectively carbon-negative system, as well as acting as a very effective soil conditioner, enhancing water and nutrient retention in poor soils.

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Clean Cut Trees

Clean Cut Trees

Clean Cut Trees

A feller buncher is a type of harvester used in logging. It is a motorized vehicle with an attachment that can rapidly gather and cut a tree before felling it.

Feller is a traditional name for someone who cuts down trees, and bunching is the skidding and assembly of two or more trees. A feller buncher performs both of these harvesting functions and consists of a standard heavy equipment base with a tree-grabbing device furnished with a chain-saw, circular saw or a shear—a pinching device designed to cut small trees off at the base. The machine then places the cut tree on a stack suitable for a skidder, forwarder, or yarder for transport to further processing such as delimbing, bucking, loading, or chipping.

Some wheeled feller bunchers lack an articulated arm, and must drive close to a tree to grasp it.

In cut-to-length logging a harvester performs the tasks of a feller buncher and additionally does delimbing and bucking.

Feller buncher is either tracked or wheeled and has self-levelling cabin and matches with different felling heads. For steep terrain, tracked feller buncher is being used because it provides high level of traction to the steep slope and also has high level of stability. For flat terrain, wheeled feller buncher is more efficient compared to tracked feller buncher. It is common that levelling cabins are matched with both wheeled and tracked feller buncher for steep terrain as it provides operator comfort and helps keeping the standard of tree felling production. The size and type of trees determine which type of felling heads being used.

Types of felling heads

Disc Saw Head – It can provide a high speed of cutting when the head is pushed against the tree. Then, the clamp arms will hold the tree when the tree is almost completed cutting. It is able to cut and gather multiple trees in the felling head. The disc saw head with good ground speed could provide high production which allows it to keep more than one skidders working continuously.

Shear Blade Head – It is placed against the tree and the clamp arms will hold the tree firmly. Then, the blade will activate and start cutting the tree. Same as disc saw head, it can hold multiple trees before they are placed on the ground.

Chain Saw Head – The floppy head provides minimal control to place the trees on the ground. It might not suit to collect the cut trees or gather the cut stems in the felling head.

Benefits of Tree cutting

Whenever people talk about tree cutting, usually the things that spring to mind are negative thoughts brought on mostly by media hypes and environmentalist drives. People think about global warming, depletion of natural resources, and the casual extinction of indigenous fauna and flora. Yet people don’t seem to realize that there are actually quite a few benefits of tree cutting.

One of the easiest benefits of tree cutting to spot are the economic ones. Lumber products are one of the most staple constructive materials in human society. Whether it’s raw lumber used for making tables and houses, or paper and other wood by-products, we simply cannot live without the use of lumber. Like steel and stone, wood is one of the most basic natural resources, and unlike steel and stone, it is renewable simply by growing more trees. The only real trick to balancing it’s consumption is to grow more trees to replace the ones taken.

On a similarly related note, keep in mind that a lot of jobs revolve around the use of lumber. Wood cutters aside, there are those who work in processing plants to make glue from wood sap, process pulp into paper, and others. This is another benefit of tree cutting; it opens more job opportunities for people who would otherwise be unemployed. These job opportunities are more than simply a humanitarian concept; society at large would suffer if all of the people working in the wood industry were to suddenly find themselves jobless.

This benefit of tree cutting not only covers the people who cut down trees and process them, but also extends to the people who “clean up” after them. For every patch of forest cut down, arable land becomes available for farmers, or can be used as an area to place urban living sites like apartments, houses, and buildings. The number of people employed by such a construction project are many and varied. Or, if the city/government mandates replanting trees to replace the lost ones, then jobs are also provided for those people who do the seeding after a patch of forest is stripped.

Thinking about it, the cleared areas are places which provide a lot of potential for growth, and this is yet another benefit of tree cutting. As stated above, arable land is valuable, and the act of tree cutting to clear a place for farm land provides a much needed additional food source for man. More often than not, the soil in a forest is much richer than that of regular farm lands because of the wide variety of life it supports. This new land area grants a much needed place to grow a food supply to deal with the planet’s steadily expanding population of humanity.

Then, of course, there is the fact that these cleared areas may be razed for urban renewal. Given our burgeoning population growth, additional living areas made on cleared forest land is another benefit of tree cutting. These places can be converted into more than just housing areas. Buildings which can house offices for work, or factories to produce clothing and other essential items, or even research facilities for things like new medical or technological advances can be placed in these deforested areas.

Lastly, another benefit of tree cutting to consider is the access it provides to other natural resources that may lay within the forest’s land area. Some places with heavy forests are home to iron ore, mineral, and even oil deposits which can be used for man’s needs. These natural resources would otherwise lay dormant and untapped unless people access them. The act of tree cutting may not be entirely necessary to get at these deposits sometimes, but coupled with the advantages given above, the combination of opening up a new mine or oil well when taken with extra living spaces or farm lands for food makes a lot of sense.

So, given all of the benefits of tree cutting outlined above, you can see that more often than not, the good outweighs the bad. The planet’s environment may indeed suffer from the effects of tree cutting, but that is due to irresponsible use of the resources and other benefits provided, not the tree cutting itself. As people living on the planet, our duty is not to “hold back” and stop cutting trees. It is to use what we glean from the Earth responsibly and wisely for humanity and the planet’s benefit.

When is the Best Time of Year for Tree Cutting?

Cheapest time to cut down a tree urban forest pro best time for tree cutting We get asked often ‘what is the cheapest time of year to have a tree cut down?’ The cost of removing a tree in Oregon can vary based on many things. And one of the main factors is the time of year in which the tree is removed. There truly is the best time of year to cut down trees.

The short answer: tree cutting typically costs much less during the winter or spring months, making it the best time for cutting. Below we’ll explain why winter or early spring is the cheapest time of year for tree cutting, as well as other things to watch out for and consider as you seek estimates from top arborists near you.

Costs For Cutting Down A Tree Can Vary On A Company’s Workload

Supply and demand often plays a big role for many leading nearby tree Service Company’s pricing. The need for tree cutting is typically lower during winter and spring, so the best tree companies may offer lower rates to ensure steady business. Here at Urban Forest Pro, we offer more competitive rates during the winter months because many people aren’t thinking about their trees during these colder months. This can mean a decent savings for a homeowner looking for the best time to remove a tree from their property from a price perspective.

Why is Winter The Best Time For Tree Cutting?

There are a number of reasons why later winter or early spring are considered the best time of year to hire a tree service near you for your tree cutting project. February and March are statistically the cheaper months for tree cutting—as they are otherwise known as “dormant season” for trees. During the winter the leaves have fallen from the trees making it easier for a tree service to cut down the tree safely and quickly.

Cutting a tree down during these months is also advantageous and considered the best time of year for the environment. The colder ground means the surrounding earth is less impacted while a top Oregon tree service handles the tree cutting. Frozen ground can keep the nearby vegetation in place while the tree is being cut down during the extraction as well.

On the other hand, top tree companies can get super busy during late spring and summer; i.e., the stormy or windy months. This is when places may need emergency tree services and cuttings which will also impact the pricing for a tree to be cut down.

Most reputable tree companies who have tree experts working for them in Oregon have licenses and modern equipment to maintain; so, if rates are suspiciously and noticeably low for tree cuttings, we advise caution: it could mean the company is skipping costs in an important area so that they can offer the best price for cutting down a tree. But the lowest cost is not always the best cost no matter what time of year it is.

Even if winter is the best time to cut down a tree on your property from a price point of view, despite “busy” or “dormant” seasons, you can get a tree removed at any time of the year. It just may impact the cost.

If you do have trees that need cutting, the top certified arborists here at Urban Forest Pro can offer not only competitive rates but also an unparalleled level of professional, safe, and efficient work.

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