Wood Chipper recommendations

[DogwoodTales]

My local Home Depot has a Bluebird 4" wood chipper to rent for $112 per day, but how fast will that work?
The branches I have to shred are up to 2-3" at some points, but mostly 2" and smaller.

I can get a 6" chipper from Arts for $240 per day, compared to HD's 6" for $299 per day.
I would expect that to perform better and probably take less of my time.

I don't have a lot to do, but at some point saving $128 isn't going to be worth the extra time I'm thinking a lessor powered chipper is going to cost me.

Have you used this 4" chipper from Home Depot before? Is it significantly slower than using a 6" chipper?

thanks

[EightFingers]

I wonder if they will make you watch a video before you rent that chipper. I rented a tow-behind chipper from a rental company and they required me to watch a safety video as part of the rental agreement.

[crokett™]

The 6" is going to perform better than the 4". Generally speaking between the fact that trees don't grow straight, smooth branches and the power of the chipper, derate any chipper by about 1/3. So a 4" chipper is going to take about a 2" branch max power wise before it slows down, and you'll have to cut a lot more of the bushy tops off. the 6" will chip faster and you have to do less cutting

[JosephP]

I assume the 6" is something like a Vermeer BC700XL or a Bandit 65XP?

Comparing those to a 4" grinder is kinda like asking if you should rip lumber with a Skil Saw and cabinet saw...sure they both work, but how much lumber are you going to rip?

[crokett™]

FWIW my dad has a 6" woodchipper that is powered off the PTO of his tractor. My experience using that one is that 5" is the max practical size. As I said, trees do not grow straight enough that 6" would fit. Even at 5" it has to be fairly straight plus you have to watch the feed rate, even at that size. Anything branches larger than about 1" have to be trimmed, the chipper can't fold larger ones over. Before you rent a chipper, go through your brush pile and prep it for chipping. trim branches off the larger stuff and cut forks larger than about 1" into two pieces. at least that is my experience.

[JosephP]

FWIW my dad has a 6" woodchipper that is powered off the PTO of his tractor.  My experience using that one is that 5" is the max  practical size.  As I said, trees do not grow straight enough that 6" would fit.  Even at 5" it has to be fairly straight plus you have to watch the feed rate, even at that size.  Anything branches larger than about 1" have to be trimmed, the chipper can't fold larger ones over. Before you rent a chipper, go through your brush pile and prep it for chipping.  trim branches off the larger stuff and cut forks larger than about 1" into two pieces.  at least that is my experience.

How old is the PTO chipper?  Does it have autofeed?  (do the 6" rentals have autofeed?)

[crokett™]

How old is the PTO chipper?  Does it have autofeed?  (do the 6" rentals have autofeed?)

6 or 8 years old maybe?  Doesn't have a ton of use, 100 hours or so.  It does have autofeed but can get stuck pretty easily on branches that grow too crooked or are not cut off close to the main branch being chipped.  The other thing is it doesn't create the large shredded stuff like most mulch.  It creates small chips that aren't as useful for mulch.  So it's good for getting rid of brush that you don't want laying around, not so good for turning it into something useful.

[greenacres2]

Once you get to $240-$300 for a day, we have a local tree guy (does a lot of agricultural fence row removals) who would pull into my driveway for an hour and chip into his trailer. No time spent on my part except for getting the material into a sort-of pile. That kind of work would be a profitable drive-by stop for my guy.

[DogwoodTales]

Once you get to $240-$300 for a day, we have a local tree guy (does a lot of agricultural fence row removals) who would pull into my driveway for an hour and chip into his trailer.  No time spent on my part except for getting the material into a sort-of pile.  That kind of work would be a profitable drive-by stop for my guy.

Yeah I used to have a guy like that. It was great while it lasted, but I he doesn't respond to me since I told him that his workers can't smoke weed while on my property - more specifically I told him that they have to be sober n the job. He doesn't, but I noticed that two of his workers did once. Oh, well.

The only quote I got from another guy for this was $425. I think that's a fair price here. So that's about $200 for my time (contractor price less cost for a rental of a 6" machine).
I almost went with it, but I decided that I'll just use my time to burn this pile and apply that $425 towards hiring him to cull a giant maple tree in my front yard that desperately needs it.
I can spend time burning sticks, as much as I don't want to, but I ain't climbing that freakin' tree or spending $1000 on the rental for a 65' boom (total rental cost and delivery/pickup) that can be put towards his $1600 price to cull that tree.

[sleepy hollow]

I'd go with the bigger chipper.  I have rented 12" chippers for larger trees and debris on multiple occaisions.  They are really great and very fast.  A 6 inch sounds like the way to go for the size stuff you describe.  All I know is that with the 12" chipper I rented one time, we could barely keep up with it and managed to shred a whole lot more than we planned without even getting close to the 8 hours of machine time we could have used.  Maybe 5 ½ hours.  Had to reposition the machine and gather the stuff several times.   Whole trees were gobbled in less than a minute.  Bigger is better with these things.  I would never even consider less than a 6" no matter what I was shredding.  For example, if you have multiple 2" branches, you can run multiple at once with a 6" with no concerns.