When this is the job you need
Removal as a standalone service usually comes up in one of these situations:
- You have cut down trees or shrubs yourself, and now there is a pile in the garden with nowhere to go.
- After a storm the garden is full of broken branches, and the tree itself is no longer the problem — the problem is what has come down.
- A hedge has been thinned or shrubs grubbed out, and there is more material than you expected.
- The pile has been standing since last year and no longer looks like a temporary arrangement.
- Space has to be freed up — for building, for planting, or simply because the garden needs giving back to the people who use it.
Take it away whole or chip it
Not all material should go through a chipper. We look at the pile on site and decide what to do with what.
Chipping is the best option for fresh branches in leaf: the volume shrinks several times over, and one trailer takes what would otherwise need three trips. But if the pile has been lying on the ground, has grown into the grass and has soil, stones or a length of old fence wire fallen in among the branches — then it is better collected and taken away whole. Soil and stones damage the chipper blades, and trying to filter them out of a year-old pile takes longer than simply loading it.
Thick trunk sections don't go through a chipper either. We either cut them up and load them, or — if you would like — leave them as firewood.
If you have a stove, a sauna or an open fire, there is no sense in paying to have the wood taken away and then buying firewood. Say so in your enquiry: we cut the trunk into firewood lengths and stack it wherever you tell us. That reduces the volume to be taken away and, with it, the haulage element of the quote. We'll be straight with you, though — green wood needs at least a year or two to season before burning, depending on the species.
What we take and what we don't
We are a tree company, not a waste contractor, and our trailer goes to a site that accepts tree material. So the line is a clear one.
- We take: branches, piles of brash, crown debris, trunk sections, stumps without soil on them, grubbed-out shrubs, hedge clippings and storm-broken material.
- We don't take: household waste, furniture, building rubble, plastic, asbestos, soil, turf or garden compost. That has to be dealt with separately through a waste contractor, and we tell you not to refuse you the work but so that you don't plan on it going with our visit.
If the material in the pile is mixed — which happens often, because everything tends to end up in the pile — we collect the tree part and leave the rest. We tell you that beforehand, not after the job.
A pile left over the winter
A pile of brash in the garden is not a neutral thing. Over a year the bottom of it starts to rot and grow into the grass, so after twelve months it can no longer be picked up without soil coming with it. A dry pile against the house wall is also a fire risk. And most importantly — a warm, dry, undisturbed pile of brash is good lodging for rodents and bark beetles. If there are fresh conifer trunks in the garden, they are a breeding site for bark beetles, from which the pests then move on to spruces that are still alive. So fresh conifer timber is worth taking out of the garden sooner rather than later.
What the price depends on
The price of removal is set by volume, the type of material and the access. In practice what matters most is how far the material has to be carried to the trailer and whether the trailer can pull up to the pile or has to stand on the road — carrying through a narrow gate takes longer than the loading itself. It is also affected by whether the material can be chipped or has to go whole, how many trips are needed, and whether foreign material has to be sorted out of the pile. If removal is part of a tree job, it is already included in the work. The full list of factors is on the prices page — and we can give a rough estimate once we've established the size of the pile and the route to it over the phone.