How to burn stumps

[MMH]

I have 6 to 8 stumps piled up that I have been trying to burn. After a good hot fire is lit (an alot of coals underneath the stumps), the stumps will smolder for a day or so, but will not continue to burn. The trees were cut down 6 months ago, although some of the stumps were just dug out of the ground.

 

[Fossil Farm]

If they have just been dug out, they are still wet and "green." How much dirt is left on the stumps ?? Move them around a bit to knock off as much dirt as possible to help them dry out and burn better. Good luck.

 

[psj12]

Get some stump remover powder (saltpeter) and follow the directions. Burn one year later.

 

[MMH]

If they have just been dug out, they are still wet and "green." How much dirt is left on the stumps ?? Move them around a bit to knock off as much dirt as possible to help them dry out and burn better. Good luck.

There is alot of dirt on them. Not so much dirt as clay. Really cannot knock the clay off w/o significant work w/ pressure washer.

 

[MMH]

Get some stump remover powder (saltpeter) and follow the directions. Burn one year later.

I never heard of stumpremover powder - I'll look into this.

 

[Carykong]

I burned a stump out with the help of an electric fan. The forced air generates wicked hot flame that will consume a stump quickly.

 

[Fossil Farm]

I burned a stump out with the help of an electric fan. The forced air generates wicked hot flame that will consume a stump quickly.

Many years ago we had a job to clean up tornado damage. The company who dealt with the debris dug a pit, put pipe with holes in it around the pit, pumped air through the pipe. The debris went into the pit and burned it green with the forced air helping to burn it quickly. Pretty cool setup.

 

[clemsonfor]

I have 6 to 8 stumps piled up that I have been trying to burn. After a good hot fire is lit (an alot of coals underneath the stumps), the stumps will smolder for a day or so, but will not continue to burn. The trees were cut down 6 months ago, although some of the stumps were just dug out of the ground.

6 months!! There still wet! even if there pine there still prolly to green if there Hardwood there still green definitly as there were live till dug up. Wait another 6 months minimum! then pile trash on them and reburn them. You can burn green wood but its a lot of work to boil all that water out of them! more than half the weight of those things is water. So if you have a 1500lb root ball (if there is no dirt) there is a good 600-800lbs of water still in that thing. There is a lot of heat needed to boil 500lbs+ of water!

 

[digger Bob]

I have 6 to 8 stumps piled up that I have been trying to burn. After a good hot fire is lit (an alot of coals underneath the stumps), the stumps will smolder for a day or so, but will not continue to burn. The trees were cut down 6 months ago, although some of the stumps were just dug out of the ground.

Get your handy dandy little hand held leaf blower and turn it on the base of the fire and it will get so hot you will have to move!
The heat removers the moisture, I guess.

 

[bigballer]

Get your handy dandy little hand held leaf blower and turn it on the base of the fire and it will get so hot you will have to move!
The heat removers the moisture, I guess.

++++1!! This is exactly how I get those big damp piles to burn.. its amazing how fast you can get the fire going again the next day too..

 

[JoeBuyer]

Right, they need to be a year old at least, depending on where you live. I had a 6' to 7' diameter tree that was too big to dig out. It was a poplar that would send new shoots out so I cut it off low and used it as my burn pile to kill off the roots. In the ground it will take even longer to dry out. But once they do the roots burn and you see smoke coming out of the ground. Then you have to fill in the crater. Good time to clean out the barn.

 

[Richard]

When I was doing my burns, they might have been a bit bigger than some of these as we had 250 acres selectively cut and there were PILES of slash. The root balls came from my own land (seperate from the farm). I would make burn piles and pile up stumps. The way I ended up looking at it was the stumps would sit/cook on the first fire and they would pretty much burn away during the second fire.

I started looking at it as a two stage process using the first fire to help dry them out. Some of these were 24/30" in diamater, oaks/pine/cedar/other Others were smaller diameter and might have burned up in the first fire.

Point of clarification, I dug all of these up, none of them were burned while in the ground.

 

[Einthewoods]

This is a realllllly old thread, but I didn't want to start a new one for no reason.

I spent a lot of time this summer clearing more land near our house so we could expand the garden and get some apple trees started. I have been pushing over the trees with my FEL with the root ball attached. Cut the tree up for firewood and then have been building piles of limbs and stumps.

I took advantage of the long weekend to start getting rid of some of the piles.....fire has been going since Saturday morning.

During the day while working outside we just kept adding limbs to the fire. In the evening I would grab a couple stumps with my forks and add them onto the bed of coals and fire in progress. Add some waste oil and then tend to it for a few hours before going in.

By morning, there is still a good bed of coals to add more limbs on and repeat. And for the fire safety crowd....it has been raining almost weekend during this and nights. Nice to see the stumps go away. Each night I expected to come out and see the stumps still sitting there being they are "wet" and well, stumps.

I still have a bunch to go, but it sure was nice to get rid of a pile.

Anyhow, back to your regular scheduled programming.