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Personally, I would suggest you go try/look at a Eliet Pro Shredder (some hire companies have them ...).
Compact, robust, easy to fit in van, accessible loading mouth, 9 or 13hp honda engine. In summary a great machine.
Prices new start @ 2.5k, but 2nd hand around £1k.
Here's an example : http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Eliet-Pro-4-Hydro-Chipper-Shredder-/27107...
Can recommend them from giving them years of abuse...;-)
Another little gem is that they can go into a van via side door and sit alongside the bulkhead, taking little room and being held securely if you have tie down d rings in van.
Oh, and can take at least 3in branches straight down the throat. If fact, that's what exactly ours was being used for this week and it's still in the back of one the vans....;-)
Sit down and carefully calculate how much time you'll spend shredding, tips to the tip with shredded waste, time spent delaing with normal waste, fuel used shredding etc, and decide if it's worth getting one or not. Consider having to carry it about, using the trailer on days you may not usually need to use it etc. For me, doing a dozen commercial sites, it's not worth getting one.
Look at it this way....With the shredder fitting neatly in the van, I would be 'educating' clients to take the output as mulch and leave on site. Financially advantageous....
With our shredders, we process all our waste into a yard skip, removing the need to visit a tip. That does save money...
I find I very rarely need to shred waste - most is taken to the local transfer station as i produce it - on larger clearances I hire a shredder - Maybe 2 - 3 times a year ---- Soft wase such as grass and hedge clippings (not woody material) is composted either on site or on my allotment and used by myself on my plot or if composted on site, in the customers garden. The rest goes in the customers garden waste bins.
As Dan said - work it out if your better off hiring on trhe odd occasion you do need one,.
Gary RK said:
What does it cost you in time, petrol and tip costs for each trip ? That's a key indicator.
For us its a min 24 mile round trip for a team of two with a min. gate charge of £42...and you can queue for up to 30 mins at peak time.
We paid for our first chipper (the eliet) within months....
So, it then depends on your type of sites, type of waste, access to tips, spare time and how many guys you have working...
I found that a trip to the tip, then became a coffee/fag break and started to be a lot of lost time.
I guess finally it's all about ROI - which is unique to each of us...
I'm with Dan on this one....examine your costs and proceed as appropriate.
I have a Camon C150 and although the shredded material composts beautifully it is not as cost efficient (for my company) as tipping it at our local composting facility.
Dan Frazer Gardening said:
Well my local waste dipsoal site costs about £70.00 incuding vat per tonne, pluss fuel that another tenner and time on top about 50mins rounds trip so a shredder chipper works well even if it get used only 2-3 times a week.
hi gary just wondering weres the exit shoot on the chipper/shredder ?
Gary RK said:
The Exit Chute is at the rear facing down. Were we can't leave waste on site, we place a peeled back builder bag underneath to collect or move it back a couple of feet every 10 mins to leave piles of shred.
We found we took on more aggressive work when we got our first shredder as we knew we could deal with it on site. We used to hate double or treble handling green waste. Since that point we now use towed behind chipper shredders at most of our sites, expecting to bring away minimal green waste.
Just a quick calculation shows it costs us double the amount of cost of waste to dispose of it into a tip (ie Wages, "lost time" & fuel = Gate charges/cost/weight of waste) ...
So thats min of ~£90 to get to a dump, offload and return to site....
Ah the joys of being in the South...
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