SCUT cutting Fire Breaks, Best Tools?

[Artisan]

I'm a career fire officer in a rust belt city,all structural firefighting.However when I was many years younger I did some serious brush fire fighting.I gotta go with the Ratchet Rake on the FEL.Pound for pound ,$ 4 $,the best attachment out there for removing brush quickly to to bare ground. I have also owned a small excavating company.Thats my 2 cents.

Sir, so let's say you have a small tractor and it has a Rachet Rake device
on the FEL and because of conditions a small tractor is good,
what would you like to see on the back to help out as well?

A Disc?
A Tiller?
A Plow?
A whatnot?

 

[shona13]

G.Day boggen .
This is an excellent and thorough reply to the artisans question .
As said the idea is not to till the soil at the wrong time , in other words dont work AGAINST nature take advantage of it and plan ahead example disc the soil after the first rain say two/three weeks after when the soil starts to soften then the disc will penetrate as much as you want .
The design of the disc plough is simplicity in itself ,it will roll over tree roots ,large rocks etc without damaging the machinery and you dont have to keep looking back checking on the machine.
Im with boggen on this one.
Happy days
Hutch.

 

[FredH]

Above first if soil is real compacted by the horses walking the fence line or rolling in the dirt .

Then/or I use my K.K. 6.5 foot angle frame disk . Notched blades front and back with 500 lbs. of weight added to it . Most of my lines are around 10' , 1 full pass , then half over to complete .

Fred H.

 

[mcald62]

The scarifier FredH shows looks pretty good. You would have to match it to the horse power of your machine. A flail mower is a waste of money. You want to remove the fuel from the advancing fire, not cut it down and let it dry out. The best thing is probably a D-7 with a Rome Plow! Aside from that I would check with an experienced interface (wild-land /urban) fire officer for the best advice. I'm sure there is a good forum for that somewhere on the internet.

 

[scootermec]

I live in northern California and run a tractor business. Most of the time, a disk works best. I have used a tiller set at shallow depth, but the problem I run into is the rocks are so hard on the tiller and is quite a bit slower. The disk works best because it is much less prone to damage. If you have alot of saplings and small brush, a bush hog is used first then run the disk over the area.

 

[Artisan]

Reading it all...I appreciate the comments much!

 

[forgeblast]

How wide are normal fire breaks?

 

[scootermec]

Out here used to be 10'. But Cal Fire has changed the rules, so now we don't do firebreaks in the traditional sense. Now we're required to have 100' of defensible space from any structures. The old way of having 6-10' of vegetation free ground around the property line no longer works. Now all vegetation must be shorter than 4" and underbrush must be cleared for the defensible space requirements.

 

[Artisan]

Out here used to be 10'. But Cal Fire has changed the rules, so now we don't do firebreaks in the traditional sense. Now we're required to have 100' of defensible space from any structures. The old way of having 6-10' of vegetation free ground around the property line no longer works. Now all vegetation must be shorter than 4" and underbrush must be cleared for the defensible space requirements.

Makes sense, and it makes the labor HUGE to pull it off too.

 

[spruce Deere]

I'm with a few others on a good, heavy disk on more 'primitive' type ground for a fire line tool for a tractor.

BUT, after fighting a few forest/wildland fires the best tool I have used is a machine with an 8 to 10 foot wide 6-way blade..... in prevention and hand to hand combat.