Stump Removal in Ashland City, Tennessee
Two ways to make a stump disappear: grind it into chips and let the roots rot in place, or excavate the whole plate. On most lots here the second one is the wrong answer.
Grinding Versus Digging the Plate Out
Pulling a stump with a machine takes the root plate as one piece. It also opens a crater two to three times wider than the trunk, tears through every lateral running under the lawn, and leaves a hole that needs several yards of fill trucked in. On a half-acre yard with sod, irrigation and a fence, that is a landscaping project wearing a stump job's clothing.
Grinding converts the stump and the upper flare into chips and leaves the lateral roots where they are to break down. The lawn stays intact except for the working circle, and the hole is measured in inches rather than feet.
There is a real case for excavation, and it is narrow. If a footing, a pool shell, a pier or a utility trench is landing on the same spot, the wood has to be gone, not merely ground. Same if a builder needs bearing soil. Outside of that, digging costs more, damages more, and leaves you buying dirt to put back what you paid to remove.
On a Flood Hazard Lot, Backfill Is Not a Free Act
Cheatham County's flood damage prevention regulations require a permit for development in a flood hazard area, and their definition of development explicitly includes filling, grading and dredging. They also state that encroachments are prohibited in the adopted regulatory floodway, including earthen fill, unless an engineering no-rise analysis shows the flood level will not go up.
Most people read that as being about houses. It also reaches truckloads of fill dumped into an excavated stump crater on a riverfront lot, and it can reach a spoil mound left standing in a floodway. The county adopted its current FIRM panels in December 2016 and February 2021, so a lot's mapped zone may not be what a neighbour remembers from the nineties.
What this means in practice is short. Look up the panel before you plan a big fill. If your ground is anywhere near the river, Sycamore Creek or Marks Creek and the job involves bringing dirt in or leaving a pile behind, ask the county first. Grinding, which brings nothing in and leaves the ground at its existing level, sidesteps the whole question.
What the Ground Looks Like When We Pull Out
The circle of grindings gets raked back into the hole and crowned above grade, because a wood-chip backfill loses about a quarter of its volume in the first year. A flat finish today is a saucer next spring, and a saucer holds water.
Where you want grass over it soon, the better finish is chips out and topsoil in for the top six to eight inches. Chips left in the soil pull nitrogen while they decompose, which is exactly why the ring of turf around a ground stump often comes back pale.
Hard surfaces get blown off, the lawn gets raked, and the flare line gets checked so nothing sits an inch under sod waiting to catch a mower blade. If the stump was in a bed, we say so and stop short of stripping mulch you paid for. It is not a complicated standard. It is just the difference between a job that is finished and one that is merely over.
The Roots You Will Still Have
Grinding removes the stump and the upper flare. The laterals stay, and on a mature silver maple those run further than the canopy ever did. They rot over five to ten years depending on species and drainage, faster in the damp bottomland soil than up on a dry ridge.
Two things follow from that. First, expect mushrooms. A flush of fungus over a decayed root line a year or two later is decomposition doing its job, not a new problem. Second, do not replant into the same hole. Push the new tree four to six feet off the old centre so its roots are working undisturbed soil rather than a slow-rotting chip column, and dig the planting hole wide rather than deep.
If a fence or a walk is going in across the old root run, mention it. Laterals under a post hole are worth knowing about before the auger, not during.
Questions Worth Settling Before We Book
- Is anything being built over the spot, and how deep is its footing
- Which FEMA panel your parcel sits on, if the lot touches the river or a creek
- Whether the grindings stay on site or leave on the truck
- Where the septic tank lid and the field lines are, on any lot outside town
- How the machine gets in, and the narrowest point on that route
- Whether the tree was cut low and flat or left as a tall angled stub
Sources
- Cheatham County Flood Damage Prevention RegulationsPermit required for development including filling, grading and dredging; floodway encroachments prohibited without a no-rise analysis
- FEMA Map Service CenterLook up the effective FIRM panel and flood zone for a specific Cheatham County address
Common Questions
Can you take the whole root system out so I can put a pool in?
For a pool shell you generally do not need us to chase every lateral. The excavator digging the pool takes out everything inside its footprint anyway. What matters is that the stump and main plate are gone before that machine arrives, and that whoever is digging knows the wood was there so they are not surprised by soft ground on one side of the hole. Tell us the pool layout and we will grind to suit it.
Is chemical stump killer worth trying first?
Not really, and it is slower than people expect. Potassium nitrate products speed decay in wood that is already dying, but a thirty-inch maple stump still takes years and is a soft, spongy, insect-friendly mass in the meantime. It also does nothing about the flare that is holding your mower off the lawn. If the stump is small and you are patient it is a legitimate route. If it is in the way, grinding is done in an hour.
The tree company quoted removal with the stump included. Why call you separately?
Plenty of crews sub the grinding out anyway. Where it saves you money is when the fell and the grind happen on different days: a tree crew that has to come back with a grinder charges for two mobilisations. What we ask either way is that the stump be cut low, flat and clear of brush, because a tall stub or a pile of limbs over the stump is billable time on our end.
Do I need permission from the town to take out a tree on my own lot?
For a tree standing entirely on private property and not a hazard, generally no. The Tree Board's permission requirement bites on trees in streets, parks and other public places, and it also reaches privately owned trees that constitute a hazard or threat. Inside the town limits, the safe move is a phone call to city hall before the saw comes out, since being wrong about a right-of-way line is an expensive mistake.
When does the ground stop settling?
About a year for the main settlement, longer where the hole was deep and the fill was mostly chips. Over-filling by three or four inches at the finish covers most of it. If you would rather not wait, take the chips away and backfill with topsoil, which settles a little and predictably. On the flats, expect a bit more movement than on the ridge, since river silt compacts when it dries out.