Stump Grinding in Fayetteville, AR

How grinding works

A grinder is a wheel of carbide teeth spinning at high speed. It gets swept across the stump, chewing it into coarse mulch a few inches at a pass, and keeps going below ground level. Standard for us is four to six inches under grade, which is enough to sod or seed over. If you are replanting a tree in the same spot, pouring a slab, or setting a fence post, say so and we go deeper, usually eight to twelve inches.

Grinding is not the same as stump removal. We are not excavating the root plate out of the ground, which would mean an excavator, a much larger hole, and a much larger bill. The remaining roots stay put and decay in place over several years. For essentially every residential purpose, that is what you want.

Before we start

Anything buried near a stump is a problem for a spinning steel wheel. We call in a utility locate for public lines, but private lines are on the property owner: irrigation, invisible fence wire, low-voltage landscape lighting, gas runs to a grill or fire pit, and septic laterals. If you know where yours are, tell us at the estimate. If you do not, tell us that too and we will probe carefully.

What happens to the chips

Grinding a stump produces a surprising volume of material, typically a mound noticeably larger than the stump looked. You have three options and we will price whichever you want.

• Backfill the hole. Cheapest. The chips go back into the void and get tamped. Expect the spot to settle over the first year as they break down, so plan to top it off.
• Haul the chips, backfill with soil. What you want if you are laying sod or seeding right away. Wood chips tie up nitrogen as they decompose and grass struggles in them.
• Leave them. Some people want the mulch for beds. Free, and it saves us the haul.

Pricing

Stumps are priced on diameter measured at the widest point of the flare, not the trunk, plus depth and access. A grinder needs a path to the stump, so a backyard stump behind a thirty-six inch gate costs more than one beside the driveway. Several stumps at once are cheaper per stump than one, since most of the cost is getting the machine to your property.

If we are already there doing a tree removal, adding the grinding to the same visit is the cheapest it will ever be. Getting it done later means paying the mobilization twice.

Old stumps count

Plenty of the stumps we grind have been sitting for years, left by whoever took the tree out, by a previous owner, or by a storm that brought the tree down. Weathered stumps are usually softer and faster to grind than fresh ones. If you have two or three scattered around the property, get them all quoted at once.

Grinding versus pulling a stump

Some people ask whether we can just pull the stump out. On a large hardwood that is rarely a good idea. Pulling means digging out the whole root ball with heavy equipment, which leaves a crater, tears up the lawn for yards around, and can disturb anything buried nearby. Grinding takes the stump and the top of the main roots down to chips and leaves the rest of the root system to break down in the soil over time. For almost every home yard, grinding is the cleaner option.

Northwest Arkansas soil is often thin and rocky, with chert just under the surface in many yards. Rock is hard on grinder teeth, so we look at the ground around the stump during the estimate and tell you if it is likely to affect how deep we can go.

Utility lines and what is underground

Before any grinding job, we make sure buried utilities have been located. Arkansas has a free locate service that marks gas, electric, water and communication lines, and we use it. Private lines the utilities do not mark, such as irrigation, low-voltage landscape lighting or a line to a shed, are worth pointing out to us when we arrive.

If you are clearing a whole area, several stumps are usually priced together. Our land clearing service covers larger jobs.

After the grind

The hole fills with chips and settles over the next season as the ground beneath breaks down. Rake the chips out, add topsoil, and the spot is ready for sod or seed. If you plan to replant a tree, choose a spot a few feet away from the old stump, where the soil is not full of decaying roots and wood chips. Give the new tree plenty of room from the house and from overhead lines.