Is chipping brush alone okay/ or total no no? all opinions welcome

[Tom Dunlap]

I seriously doubt its any safer if a climber is in the tree....

When I lived in Denver I met a guy at a couple of workshops. Nice guy and good arborist. I got a call telling me that he had been pulled through a chipper feet first. He was chipping while his climber was cutting down a tree nearby. The climber had his ear pro on and was using the chainsaw when he heard 'something'. The climber looked down to see the fellow in the chipper chute. As far as I know there was no confirmed determination of exactly what happened. There is NO REASON to hash this out again. The point is...chipping can be dangerous...no matter what.

 

[RogerM]

Depending on the hat of the day, we will communicate that we are about to cycle the chipper before doing it. Lets us know where the other is in regards to the timing of things... I'm all about recycling, but didn't mean to recycle this topic, I'll take a look in the archives... Excellent point Tom.

 

[climbingmonkey24]

Depends on who else is around in my opinion. An inexperienced ground operator who has never ran a chipper and doesn’t understand the dangers of ropes and other tools getting caught up in the brush while you’re feeding could pose a serious hazard.

Solo? Again, depends on the person operating the chipper. I’ve done my fair share of solo work in the past, rigging and all. Definitely nice to have a well trained groundman to take some of the workload off of just one guy, and also to give you a second opinion on things. Something to keep in mind when working solo when you’re climbing and doing all the cleanup / chipping all by yourself especially if it’s hot and humid, is it can be more tiring by yourself which could cause a lapse in judgement if you lose focus because you’re getting worn out. So that’s something to be mindful of in my opinion.

Because we primarily do pruning work, we will do a mix of hydraulic dump trailer / chipper depending on size of job.