Stump Grinding in Centerton, AR

Why the leftover stump is worth dealing with

A stump sitting in a Centerton yard is not just ugly. It causes three real problems.

It wrecks equipment. Our soil is full of chert and limestone fragments, so a stump and its root flare sit in ground that is already hard on a mower deck. Clip one hidden root at speed and you are buying a blade and a spindle.

It feeds termites. A decaying hardwood stump twenty feet from your foundation is exactly the kind of moist, rotting wood that termite colonies build out from. This is the reason a lot of homeowners call us after a pest inspection.

It sprouts. Hackberry, sweetgum, elm, and Bradford pear will all throw suckers off a cut stump for years. Silver maple is the worst of them. You end up mowing the same tree over and over instead of killing it once.

How we grind them in this kind of ground

Rock is the thing that makes stump work here different. The grinder wheel hits chert and limestone constantly, so we set depth deliberately rather than just burying the wheel and hoping.

Standard depth is six to eight inches below grade, which is enough to plant grass over and mow forever. If you are putting a patio, a shed pad, a driveway, or a fence post where the tree stood, tell us up front and we go deeper and chase the major roots out further. That costs a bit more and it saves you a settling problem later.

Before the grinder starts we have the utilities located, because gas, water, and fiber lines are shallow in this town and a lot of them were put in during the building boom. We also fence off or shield anything close by, since a grinder throws grit hard enough to chip siding and pit a car door.

What happens to the hole and the chips

Grinding a stump produces a surprising volume of chips, usually more than people expect. You have three options and none of them cost extra to choose:

• Backfill it. We push the chips back into the hole and crown it slightly, because it will settle. Fine if you are not planting grass right away.
• Haul the chips and bring in dirt. Best if you want to seed or sod it. Wood chips tie up nitrogen while they break down and grass struggles in them.
• Leave the chips in a pile. Some folks want them for beds and trails. Say the word and we will stage them where you want.

Either way we rake the area out and blow the surrounding grass and concrete clean before we go.

What it costs

Most single yard stumps run $95 to $350 depending on diameter, how much root flare is above ground, and whether we can get the machine to it without taking a gate off. Backyard stumps behind a narrow fence gate cost more than front yard stumps for that reason alone.

If we are already on site after a tree comes out, adding the grind is much cheaper than a separate trip, so it is worth deciding at quote time. Got a whole row of them along a property line? A fence line full of stumps and scrub gets priced as one job instead of by the stump.