Owner Adam Lieder recalls the search:

“We have land clearing guys with shears, but we didn’t have an excavator large enough to bust up big wood. We looked at other avenues that would allow us to process some of our bigger wood into more manageable pieces.”

he says.

The landscaper found the Black Splitter through an internet search. After making a positive connection with owner Eric Ransome, the company was convinced that the S2 800 was the right fit for its machine and operation.

Out on the Limb’s previous process needed improvement, according to Lieder.

“We were just trying to just get rid of nasty bones wherever we could. We were basically cutting it down to firewood size and putting it on the log splitter.”

he says with a laugh.

The S2 800 is designed to fit all sizes of compact excavators, but Out on the Limb has it mounted on a Bobcat E45 Mini Excavator. A quick coupler allows for a quick switch between machines as needed. The Black Splitter can usually be found processing wood in the company’s yard, or in tow on a trailer to a local worksite. Most onsite removals and cuts are done with a rotating grapple, but Out on the Limb often uses the Black Splitter to breakdown larger, gnarlier trees and stumps.

Seymour and surrounding towns are heavily wooded with an abundance of mature trees so Out on the Limb often takes down and disposes of large, off-size timber. Logs under eight feet cannot be sold, and yet they’re also too large to dispose of easily.

“With the Black Splitter, we can take these large, knotty sections, bust them down into a manageable size, chip it, and sell the chips. We can also break down six-footers into four sections and drop it off at someone’s house for a pack of cheap firewood.”

he says.

The S2 800 is in its glory back at the yard when processing and feeding wood to a Morbark 20/36 Whole Tree Drum Chipper. The crew usually sorts garbage wood and logs into separate piles and begins breaking them down when the mound gets too large.

“When we’re in processing mode, we throw the Black Splitter on and hammer down,”

says Lieder.

The increased productivity is noticeable but the greater value for Out on the Limb is in being able to turn once unusable materials into a new revenue stream.

“We’re taking byproducts that we couldn’t do anything with and turning them into a usable product,”

Lieder says.

Out on the Limb re-grinds wood chips and dyes them to make mulch. The finished product is sold to commercial customers and given to homeowners for free because there is no demand for the chips with the abundance of trees in this part of Connecticut.

“These chips are a usable product to somebody somewhere, and they’re easy to get rid of because homeowners like them. Now I can keep Joe Smith happy because he gets a free load of wood chips and I don’t have to look at this big, gnarly piece of pine that I have no use for.”

he says.

Lieder says his crews deal with virtually every type of northeastern tree including Pine, Oak, Ash, Hickory, Maple, Spruce, and Hemlock. Out on the Limb has not encountered any wood that the Black Splitter could not handle, but they find Hickory to be the most challenging because of its stringiness. In these cases, the excavator operator simply engages the spinning motion of the S2 800 and sweeps between the log sections to break the strands.

Out on the Limb’s use of the Black Splitter is sporadic.

“We don’t run the S2 800 every day, but a few weeks ago we ran it for a week straight. I couldn’t even tell you how many hundreds of yards of wood chips we produced.”

Lieder says.

The S2 800 also helps with a trend among homeowners that’s resulting in increased processing for Out on the Limb. Homeowners in decades past often asked for firewood to be left on-site, as opposed to today’s homeowners that want everything hauled away.

This means less time in the field breaking down wood and cleaning up sawdust and more time hauling and processing it.

“It’s cheaper for us to just haul it offsite and try to figure out something later than it is to sit there and cut up firewood and sawdust in someone’s yard. It’s a win-win because I don’t have to clean up sawdust in the yard and we’re making a bad byproduct into good byproduct, which is obviously the number one goal.”

Lieder says.

Lieder sees the possibility of buying a larger excavator and Black Splitter model in the future.

“If we keep on growing, we’ll probably add another bigger Black Splitter and keep on doing what we’re doing. It seems to be working.

he says.

The article was written by Brian M. Fraley Fraley Construction Marketing

The post [Job Story] Limb Tree Service Finds Stability with Ransome Attachments Black Splitter S2 800 appeared first on North America FarmQuip Magazine.

Great Lakes was contracted by the City of Decatur in April of 2020 to dredge sediment from the 3,093-acre Lake Decatur. The objective was to increase the storage capacity for the local drinking water supply. The contractor completed that work in November of 2019 and returned to the Oakley Settling Basin (OSB) in April to finish up the dewatering ditches and the landscaping. Great Lakes had cut out the ditches in mid-2019, but they had since refilled due to the viscosity of the material.

Project Superintendent Tim Cantwell says:

“The job here was to put in drain tiles and ditch it so that there’s no standing water and that over the years it will dry and return to farmland. We had about 6,000 feet of ditches that were cut all the way around the perimeter, in addition to cutting some new ditches going to the standing pockets of water.”

Cantwell recalls the process to find the right tool for ditch maintenance. Great Lakes had seen an attachment similar to the Ditch Doctor in Louisiana prior to April, but it was too large and required a hydraulic drive unit to be mounted on the back of the excavator. Its site manager conducted an internet search and came across video footage of the Ditch Doctor and contacted New Jersey-based Ransome Attachments. The Ditch Doctor was smaller, lighter, and able to mount directly onto an excavator.

Ransome supplied a 22-inch Ditch Doctor with wet scroll case in May of 2020. Great Lakes mounted it on a Cat 324DL Long Reach Excavator and proceeded to complete more than 2,500 linear feet of ditch maintenance. The ditches were an average of four-foot-deep and 10-foot-wide with varying sediment depths.

The detachable wet scroll case was chosen because it would allow Great Lakes to ditch in up to three feet of water. Most of the ditches contained a mucky combination of clays and organic materials and puddled water with minimal vegetation on top and rocks that had settled on the bottom. The alternative, a dry scroll case, is best suited for ditches with one foot or less of water.

Great Lakes also used the traditional method, a ditching bucket, which allowed for a side-by-side comparison. The contractor has traditionally used a pump to dewater the trench to the greatest extent possible before excavating. Great Lakes had a custom adapter plate made for the quick coupler so changing attachments was a matter of switching out a 70- and 80-millimeter pin.

At its core, the Ditch Doctor is a ditch maintenance attachment. The bucket work was required when Great Lakes encountered virgin clay while digging new ditches. says Cantwell:

“The bulk of the work – roughly 80 percent of it – was in previously dug ditches that had filled in. The Ditch Doctor worked really well because it just took the sediment that filled those ditches in and blew it right back out.”

“If you have the proper conditions, it’s (Ditch Doctor) at least twice as fast as excavating with a bucket. It did a really good job of cleaning out ditches that had just filled in with the sediment and blew it out of there, kind of like a snowblower.”

says Cantwell, noting that having enough water to slurry the material is key.

One of the Ditch Doctor’s benefits compared to conventional methods is that no hauling off site is required. Great Lakes used the Ditch Doctor to project material as far away from the ditch and into the impoundment basin as possible. It was able to adjust the RPM output on the Ditch Doctor to help determine the projection distance.

The projection distance was mainly controlled by the thickness of the sediment and water content, according to Cantwell.

“If there was a lot of water, you could throw it 25 to 30 feet. And other times, you were into thicker, heavier material with more clay, and it would project 10 to 15 feet.”

he says, adding that most of the material is in such a wet form that it self-levels within 24 hours.

 Although Great Lakes had entered into a rental purchase agreement, it ultimately decided not to buy the Ditch Doctor because no fiscally responsible contractor wants a piece of equipment sitting idle.

“We’ve never used anything like this before. It’s a unique piece of equipment, so if you have steady work for it, it’s fine. If we get a future project that’s the right fit, we know it will be available from Ransome.”

says Cantwell.

The article was written by Brian M. Fraley Fraley Construction Marketing

Source: Ransome Attachments

The post Great Lakes Dredging sends sediment flying with the ditch doctor appeared first on North America FarmQuip Magazine.