Solution to wayward bark chips

When my husband splits wood, he always has a huge pile of bark afterwards, and I chip that bark for mulch.  We've had our chipper for about 3 years now, and I've tried several different solutions to containing the chips that come flying out of the chipper.

My first solution was to point the chipper outlet into a trailer.  I started with my small ATV trailer, but that wasn't big enough.  Chips flew all over and out.  Plus, I could only chip for about 15 minutes before it was full.  That meant that I either had to hurry up and use it, bag it right away, or just let everything sit for now and then I'd have to chip again when I needed chips.

My second solution was to lay a huge tarp down and chip onto that.  I could chip a large amount and then cover it if I needed to, or bag it up and store the bags of chips.  When I needed the chips, it was easy to put the bags in the ATV trailer to wherever I needed them.   To bag the chips, I saved chicken feed bags, and put one into a 5-gallon bucket to get it started.   Then I could take the bag out of the bucket to finish filling.   Of course, that's rather labor-intensive.   Plus, since bagging the chips usually extended over several days, weeks or months (depending on my 'chore schedule'), it remained a mess until it was all cleared.  That drove my husband crazy, and the tarp was also pretty much decimated by the time I was done.

So, here we were this year - a huge (and very, very messy) pile of bark in front of the log lean-to, which is next to our driveway and quite visible from our living room.  It would be an onerous effort to take that huge pile to a different location to chip.  Plus, there was just no way my husband would be able to stand the mess of chips.

We had an area between the lean-to and the garden that was about 4' wide.  We purchased plywood, which I painted with exterior paint.  My husband screwed it to the side of the lean-to, the fence, and put two 4'x4' posts in for the 3rd side, making a 'chipping bin'.   While we still have a little tweaking to do, my first chipping session worked pretty well.

So the old man has an issue with chips

Plus, there was just no way my husband would be able to stand the mess of chips.

He makes the mess surely its his issue to fix it up?
Maybe do the work elsewhere?

Dies the bark destroy the chipper?

John C Daley wrote:So the old man has an issue with chips

Plus, there was just no way my husband would be able to stand the mess of chips.

He makes the mess surely its his issue to fix it up?
Maybe do the work elsewhere?

Dies the bark destroy the chipper?

haha - he doesn't do the chipping - I do   Anything to do with the garden is mine to do.  He takes care of the vehicles, lawn, splitting wood, and taking the trash to the dump (we don't have trash pickup here).

To my knowledge, the bark hasn't hurt the chipper at all.   It comes off the logs in big, curved 'sheets'.   I just have to make sure the bark sheets aren't so wide that they get stuck.    Our chipper doesn't automatically 'feed' the stuff through, so I sometimes have to take a long stick and poke the bark until the blades catch it.