Dooley,
This will help you with your questions with chipper shredders!

Heather3,
hanks for the link unfortunately all I get is this error

"Our apologies. You found something before us!
The Web address you are looking for is not currently functioning on our website.
If you have any questions, please contact us at 1-877-676-1202."

Still researching but so far cant find a definitive answer.

Txs again.

Dooley,

Perhaps this link to chipper-shredders is what was intended.

MM

Hi Dooley,

From what I've read on the link I provided, people like it. I hesitate to buy any electric outdoor products because of portability issues. If you have 4 acres, you need to run cords(which is not recommended. The further out you get, the bigger the cord you need and the hotter the cord gets. I wouldn't buy a cord longer than 50 feet that is less than 12 gauge) or bring the stuff to be chipped closer to the house. A couple of the reviews talked about it plugging on wet or large stuff. If you're shredding bark in your wood area, I'll bet you won't have too much trouble.

A Troy Bilt Super Tomahawk would be within your $250-400 budget, if you're willing to buy used and would accept a gas engine. I had a mid 80's TB ST for a year or so and was well pleased with it. The only reason I sold it was because I upgraded to a BCS chipper for my 715. The shredder with the proper size screen would be just the ticket for shredding bark. It also has a chipper for branches up to 3 inches. If you're really lucky, maybe you could find a Mackissic used, but they're a little less common and tend to bring a little higher price.

Good luck with your decision.

Here is a link that might be useful: reviews of the electric chipper

Thanks for the link. Guess our needs and wants are unique. For us a gas powered unit would be massive overkill.

Any trees we take down are used as firewood if they are burnable otherwise they and their branches are stacked on a burning pile.On Boxing Day we have a tree burning bonfire wiener roast.

Leaves are mulched and picked up with our garden tractor.

The only reason we were looking at a chipper was in our wood cutting area there is usually an accumulation of tree bark (we peel it off to help the green wood cure). About 6-9 leaf bags of bark a year.

We thought the chips would be handy for mulch in the garden , on trails , in the tractor storage leanto etc.

A $700+ investment for something that would basically just be a toy for us to use once or twice a year is more than I think it's worth. That's why the But thanks for the replies.