The Oxfordshire Woodland Group needs a timber chipper and / or funding towards the purchase of same.
Typically a diesel driven Forst or Timberwolf would suit or needs. These cost £20-30K new and £12-15k second hand.
The typical arising that need to be chipped to help ensure woodland fire safety includes snedding branch heaps -
- & saw milling offcuts.
What to do with the sawdust heaps created from sawmilling ?
In March 2023 we purchased a new Hyundai chipper which does an excellent job on branch material and sawmill arisings.
The quality of the chips (willow & hazel) produced are good to excellent. A small number of "oversize" chips can be seen but for garden mulch this is fine.
The Hyundai is supposed to chip up to 4.5" diameter logs but that is really firewood and hence it would be somewhat wasteful to turn this into wood chip.
This type of chipper typically costs between £2 - £4k new i.e. about one tenth of the cost of a Forst or Timber Wolf chipper. It relies on gravity feed rather than power feed and it is not road legal (i.e. no lights, suspension, spare wheel, etc) hence it would need to be transported from place to place on a road legal trailer which in turn would cost £1.5 - 2.5K depending on size. Our road legal Ifor Williams trailer is quite suitable for this purpose.
Loading, unloading and transporting a heavy chipper (250 - 300kg) on a trailer is an involved operation that has associated safety issues.
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Chipper