Dood get some animals like chickens or a couple pigs and mix it with the poop for glorious compost.
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Dood get some animals like chickens or a couple pigs and mix it with the poop for glorious compost.
The County has free green waste disposal on weekends throughout the month. The first of many loads
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Helper
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The second one is like something out of a Saw type movie, like WTF was the guy thinking?
^That was insane. I can’t believe there weren’t at least a few fingers flying off during that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BmillsSkier
Well here we are.
The first one made sense. Slow and steady.
The rest of those are death traps and rampant OSHA violations.
$$ shot
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Our land maintenance is piling rocks where the waves beat on the very steep dirt banks that are receding ever closer to the road. Unfortunately, every year the waves get bigger as ski boats become wake board boats and wake boarders become wake surfers, while the rocks I can lift get smaller and smaller. In a few weeks they'll let the water out of the lake, the beach will return, and the waves that come with the winter storms won't reach the banks. But every year we lose a big pine tree at the water's edge that holds the land together. Pretty soon they're going to have to rip rap the shoreline, which will be a shame.
I could use one of those little folder pruner saws for low to the ground cuts with more accuracy and cleaner cut than the lopper. Not that it’s that much money to risk but man do the fiskars get horrible reviews. Thinking of trying the random Conrona brand (bet they’re happy with their name) that gets way better reviews. Not really wanting to drop triple for the silky but I guess I could.
Edit, I see there’s about 5 versions of the same saw now.
Man I hate shopping.
This weekend has a local free green waste drop off. I spent some time improving my neighbor’s property next to my road that accesses my driveway. I have lots more slash and narrow logs to load. More than I’ll have time to deal with this weekend. A friend loaned me their trailer, which is almost twice the size of mine.
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I’ve been using these loaner plant pullers/“weed jacks” to yank the Scotch broom, an aggressive invasive in my area, and small incense cedar sprouts (a native that behaves like a weed)
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I participated in my first rx burn at the beginning of the month. It was partially a training exercise for people like me. The burn objective was to improved wildfire safety for some structures at a university forest research facility. At the facility, they burn right up to the structures regularly to control surface fuels. It was interesting to see. This particular burn was across a parking lot from the HQ office. I’d like to put fire (broadcast burning) on my little property to control surface fuels, but I want a little more experience first. I’m volunteering in the recently formed local prescribed burn association and hope to participate in several burns in the fall (the seasonal burn ban is now I effect in my area). Here’s a photo of the burn boss lighting it up. We scraped the control line shown in the edge of photo.
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Does anyone have a recommendation on a battery powered weed whacker and a push reel style mower? This is for a small yard, definitely don’t want to mess around with gas. Last weed whacker I had was corded and would like to avoid that.
I have a set of Makita 18V battery tools....
We just got an Aiper Smart 20V whacker from Amazon. Comes with two batteries; plenty of power for a small yard.
I've got a 40V Ryobi weed whacker that's been great over the last 3 years. Battery life gets about 30-45 minutes.
Then I've been doing all mowing with a variety of corded electric lawn mowers over the last 15 years. Get 100 feet of 10 gauge extension cord and you're good to go.
ego is king in the e-powered territory. Brushless. Batteries all swap and range from 2.5 - 7.5 depending on needs.
Electric feed on whacker is great. More plastic on the mower than I’d like but 1.5 years in and it still looks new. Blower has stupid power (use it to blow snow off my driveway).
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If you’ve already got Makita batteries...Quote:
Originally Posted by old_newguy
I have the cheapest makita 18v wacker. Perfect for my small yard. You need the larger 5ah batteries. Throw away the trimmer string that came with it and buy some nice string.Quote:
Originally Posted by old_newguy
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I have a battery powered black and decker 3 in 1. Basically a string trimmer that plugs into a little mowing deck. Perfect for my tiny and uneven yard. Mowing feels more like vacuuming. I tried, but my yard is too small for a reel mower to get enough momentum to make sense.Quote:
Originally Posted by old_newguy
If a better brand made a similar device I’d buy it, but my 45 seconds of research came up empty. Honestly it’s worked great and I have no real complaints. It’s not the sturdiest thing, but it gets the job done.
BLACK+DECKER 3-in-1 Lawn Mower, String Trimmer and Edger, 12-Inch (MTC220) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HH4K548...Z5HSHM4M2P3CMR
I was wondering about the amp hour required. I think I have 2 or 3 amp hour batteries so might need to upgrade if I stay makita.Quote:
Originally Posted by nickwm21
I debated corded but my past experience has been that the cord setup takes longer than I actually use it.
Small house, small yard, small storage so will probably put up with the momentum challenges with the reel mower.
That B and D looks clever but cheesy as hell. I’m sort of a buy once cry once type of buyer.
It’s SO CHEESY! I feel ridiculous every time I need to vacuum my lawn.Quote:
Originally Posted by old_newguy
But going on year three and I dunno…. Still does the thing it needs to do.
My lawn is about 25’x20’ and I totally get the momentum concern, but my reel mower works well enough. If I found a little battery mower powered by Milwaukee 18v I’d probably get it.
I’m waiting for my corded string trimmer to break so I can get a battery-powered one. So much more convenient. I’ve got a 9 mah and a 12 mah batteries, and I’ve become totally into battery-powered tools.
I found the right thread. We started doing small understory broadcast burns on our property during the dry winter. We live in a pondo pine/black oak forest, which is mostly full of fire adapted/dependent plants. We focused on surface fuels and duff, which is pretty deep. So deep that we don’t see much growing on our forest floor. We only have 1.6ac. The largest of the burns was only 1,000SF, which took about 4hrs, including prepping the little unit. I did them all by myself with occasional help from the kids, so I was very conservative on site prepping, what fuel I was burning, water nearby, downslope backing fire only, and wx conditions (especially wind). It’s SO much easier than blowing, raking, hauling, and disposing of the surface fuels. There are supposed to be a lot of ecological benefits, too, which I’m looking forward to experiencing. We’ll be burning most of the property next wet season when conditions allow. I would like to do some thinning and clean up before that time for more successful burns. Depending on how areas respond, we’ll probably do it every year or two after these “entry” burns.
Over 40ac of private property was burned last winter in my hood (on purpose). I volunteered about 9 hrs at a 9ac burn last week, which was a pretty cool community event.
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^^ interesting post, got me thinking.
Controlled burn would be easy on my place, it can’t get out of control because it’s an island. Plus no structures. I will talk to my county forestry dept about it. Thanks for posting.
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Probably different burning objectives on your island than my area. Just make sure you don’t kill the vegetation that you don’t want to kill.
Nice work! :yourock:Quote:
Originally Posted by bodywhomper
Thx.
Been doing a shitload of fire mitigation this spring. Yesterday we took six loads of branches to the transfer station. That was more than a ton that we loaded and unloaded--and we still have five or six loads to go. Today I visited my chiropractor for some relief.
Could have rented a chipper but that's $250 a day and kind of a pain. Could burn it but in the 14 years we've been in this house there have been three fires that have threatened our house and all three were started by idiots and their burn piles. So we decided to just haul it away this time. This U-haul trailer was $35 and a total beast.https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...40c22e5d49.jpg
I've read most all of this thread but forgetting if hedge trimmers have been spoken about. I didn't realize they could cut 5/8 to an inch diamiter branches. I find it hard to believe but maybe. I have some of those gigantic 10 foot tall grasses to cut down. The stalks are probably only 1/2" and pretty light.
But if I could use the machine on my lilacs and juniper, it would pay for the time for sure.
Lilac branches with a hedge trimmer?
I can’t help with hedge trimmer advice.
We’ve done that a bunch, too. I missed the free green waste disposal in our area, too. Your chippers are more expensive to rent than ours. The thing about chipping or masticating vs hauling or burning is that you still have the fuel just in a different form, and sometimes a form more a available to carry a fire.Quote:
Originally Posted by yeahman
True, although if it's chips on the ground vs. a tree that can crown it's much less of a hazard in terms of a fast-spreading fire. The chipper I've rented is spendy, it's a professional woods-worker caliber machine capable of chipping up to 6 inch pine branches, which is pretty damn burly, like Fargo style if you know what I mean [emoji2]. It is a loud and dirty job. My buddy says just burn it, it's free, but it is stressful and smokes out your neighbors and we have 10 acres so it would require multiple slash piles/fires.Quote:
Originally Posted by bodywhomper
Doing land maintenance is a lot of work. Funny we bought the house from a couple in their 70s who were selling it for just that reason. I'm not there yet but I can see why they wanted to get out of it. For now I still halfway enjoy it..
I just looked it up. The 6” chipper that I rent is $175/day. Almost to the same cost. We have too many chip piles at the moment. last summer, meat bees made a nest in one pile. That kinda sucked.
On the 9ac broadcast burn that I worked last week, after the understory burn was done, we collected many of the larger unburned sticks (aka bones), and made small pile burns within our burn unit. Attention was paid to not be too close to trees trunks, stumps and stuff excluded in the burn unit, and the canopy. piles can burn hot compared the surface fuels of the broadcast burn. Burning in the black seems to work well.
I’ll be cutting and hauling to the transfer station later this month and next month.
In the dry CA winter, there were many escaped burn piles because the duff was super dry and smoldering under the piles (bad practice by the burner, IMO.) three escaped burn piles today in my general area that turned into understory or grass fires that required Calfire to extinguish. Sounds like structures and canopies were untouched (thankfully).
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5/8” can be done, but you wait and wait for the nibbler. And the cut is ugly.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rideski
but for tree like shrubs I prefer to hand trim with loppers. To control the shape better.
When I moved into my overgrown house I bought a gas hedger that was affectionately called THE ANGRY BEAVER
It died two years ago. Been using a dewalt cordless now. Not as angry but works great.
First of the season
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Day two
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Anybody else land maintenance-ing w/o chainsaws?
This is probably my last burn in a while. At the ski hill tomorrow (woot!) and rain/snow’s in the forecast. Praise ullr!
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Bump
Currently, in another brief burn window for small surface fuels like needles and leaves. Unfortunately, my day job wrk load has me bound to other things.
We had a brief window a few weeks ago that corresponded to when my teen was home, not super busy, and awake. He got to do a small maintenance burn by one of our critical structures (sits over a cistern tank and water pump system).
Nice article of fuel reduction. https://www.hcn.org/articles/wildfir...ire-prevention
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I’ve got a 13 yr old walk behind mower, 7.5hp, 21” cut, troy built (I think) with a Briggs and Stratton. Based on my quick math I figure this mower had about 375-400 hrs on it.
Have cut once this season with no issues, but it probabaly did have some old gas in it. today I couldn’t get mower to turn over and fire. Checked spark plug, new gas, checked fuel lines, air filter. When I pull the cord the flywheel just feels a little rough and just isn’t quite smooth, and engine ran a bit rough last summer it seems. Could I have done something by running an hour or so last week with old gas (that had been treated with marine stabil?)
So do I try and figure this out, take it to a small engine repair or feel good about getting 13 yrs out of it and get a new mower?
Fix it! Either on your own or with (paid) help.
Old gas could leave water or gook in the carb if you didn't run it dry before you put it to bed. Old gas wouldn't cause engine issues. Youtube for carb cleaning how tos. Start shopping electric.
IMO when Briggs go bad, it's pretty catastrophic. The only reason I'd get rid of it is if it was burning oil and you would know if it was burning oil. Otherwise, I'd pull the plug and see if you're getting spark by grounding the plug body, not the electrode, to the engine block and pulling the recoil. Otherwise, it's probably fuel related. The carbs are pretty easy to clean or rebuild, and if you're not so inclined, you can usually get a knock off from Amazon for around $20-$30. I doubt it's air related, but you might check the throttle linkage to make sure it's activating the choke, if equipped, I've knocked mine out of alignment putting and pulling out of storage.Quote:
Originally Posted by present tense
Torn it down this afternoon, new spark plug, cleaned carb pretty good. Seems like something on linkage isn’t working right. Carb never opens when I crank it unless you force linkage open, even forced open it won’t fire off. During all this troubleshooting also noticed a decent drip of oil coming from side of engine opposite carb. No clue where from.