Stumps and root plates pulled out of the ground with an excavator and a root rake, so you can build on the spot, run utilities through it, or stop mowing around it.
Two different jobs and it matters, so we say it plainly rather than letting you find out. Grinding chews a stump into chips six to twelve inches below grade and leaves the root system in the ground to rot out over several years. We don’t own a grinder and we don’t offer it. What we do is pull the whole thing, stump and root plate together, out of the ground with an excavator.
A ground stump leaves the root plate in the ground, and it decays and settles. Anything with a footing, a slab or paving over it has to be removed, not ground.
Water, sewer, power, a septic line.
Full clearing to bare dirt means the plates come out anyway, this is part of that job.
Live oak and water oak root plates in this part of the country get far larger than the trunk suggests, and past a certain size a walk-behind grinder is not the tool.
If the stump is in a finished lawn, close to a house, inside a fence line or anywhere an excavator can’t reach without tearing up the ground to get there, grinding is the right answer and we’re the wrong contractor. A tree service or a dedicated stump grinding outfit will do it better, cheaper and with far less disturbance. We’ll tell you that on the phone rather than selling you a job you shouldn’t buy.
A hole. Sometimes a considerable one, because the plate is wide. Standard is to backfill with the spoil and level it off. If the ground is going to be seeded or built on, say so at quote and we’ll price it properly, backfilled loose soil settles, and on a building spot that matters.
Free, required, and it needs a few working days. An excavator finds a shallow line fast.
Irrigation, invisible fence, a run to a shed or a well pump, septic lines and the drain field. Only you know where those are.
The excavator has to reach it, and it has to get in without going over anything you care about.
Old fence wire around the base of a stump is common on rural ground.
No. We pull them out whole with an excavator and a root rake. If you need grinding, a stump in a finished lawn, tight to a house, inside a fence, call a tree service or a stump grinding specialist. It’s the right tool for that job and we’ll happily say so.
A hole, backfilled with the spoil and levelled. On a big water oak or live oak the hole can be wider than people expect, because the root plate is wider than the trunk.
Yes, and tell us at quote so we handle the backfill accordingly. Loose backfill settles, which is fine under a lawn and not fine under a footing.
Only if the total job clears our $1,000 minimum, which a single stump usually doesn’t. The drive, the trailer, the unload and the reload cost the same whether it’s one stump or thirty, which is why volume is where this makes sense.
No. Once the plate is out the tree is finished. A few species send suckers up from surviving root fragments for a season, sweetgum and chinaberry in particular. Those mow off.
Call and you get John Williams, not an answering service and not a dispatcher. If it’s after hours or a Sunday, send the form and you’ll have a text back and a callback first thing.
