Wood Chip and Grinding Spoil Removal in Ashland City
The pile a ground stump leaves is two or three times what most people expect, and on the flats it comes out wet and heavy. Settle where it is going before we start.
Two Cubic Yards, and Most of the Weight Is Water
Volume first. A thirty-inch stump taken ten inches below grade produces on the order of two loose cubic yards once the wood is shredded and mixed with the soil that came up with it. That is a pile about four feet across and knee high, out of a stump you could have sat on.
Weight is where the bottomland changes the arithmetic. Punk out of a willow or a box elder behaves like a sponge, and a cubic yard of it can weigh half again to twice what the same measure of dry ridge-lot oak grindings weighs. Two yards of the wet material is well past what a half-ton pickup bed is rated to carry, which is how people end up making four trips and bending a tailgate on the second one.
If you plan to move it yourself, plan on a wheelbarrow and a Saturday rather than a truck and an hour.
Do Not Put It Back in the Hole Under Grass
Spoil packed into a void looks like a finished job for about one season. Then the wood breaks down, the volume drops by roughly half, and you have a dish. On the flats that dish holds water and becomes a soft spot the mower scalps on every pass. Up on the ridge lots it drains, but the settling exposes chert that the blade finds instead.
The way that actually works is straightforward: fill the void with soil, use screened topsoil for the last few inches, tamp it in layers rather than dumping it in one go, and leave the surface an inch or two proud of the lawn because it will keep settling for a while yet. The spoil goes on top of a bed somewhere, or it goes on the truck. It does not go in the hole under new sod.
If you want the spot seeded straight away, say so at the quote, because that backfill is a different material and it carries a small cost.
Where a Pile Cannot Sit on a River Lot
On the town side, the municipal floodplain ordinance and the TDEC stormwater requirements the city posts alongside its adopted codes are why we do not stage spoil anywhere it can wash. A mound of loose organic material on a bank falling to the Cumberland, sitting in a swale, at the lip of a Marks Creek or Sycamore Creek cut, or beside a curb inlet, is a discharge waiting on the next thunderstorm.
So the working rules on riverside and creekside lots are short. Nothing staged on a slope above water. Nothing inside a drainage line. And where there is no dry, flat, off-drainage spot available, it leaves with us the same day rather than sitting there through a weekend of forecast rain.
The other place spoil cannot sit is banked against a trunk. Wet material piled around the base of the tree you kept is a good way to lose the tree you kept.
Leaving It, and What Haul-Off Costs
Keeping the spoil is a perfectly reasonable choice and it takes the haul-off line off the quote entirely. It works as a surface layer on an established shrub bed, as fill for a muddy gate approach or a path on the acreage lots, or as a back-corner pile that quietly turns into soil over two or three seasons.
Haul-off is priced by the yard rather than by the stump, which catches people out in the opposite direction to what they expect. A dozen small red cedars out of a fencerow can produce more material to load than one large oak does. On a wet bottomland lot there is a second variable: where the truck cannot reach the pile, loading becomes a barrow job and it takes as long as it takes.
The figure is on the quote before we start either way. Nobody should be finding out what haul-off costs after the pile already exists.
Where the spoil can go, and what it will do there
- Three inches on top of an established shrub bed, held back off the stems
- Into a muddy gate approach or a farm track, where dense hardwood spoil binds well
- A quiet back-corner pile that becomes usable soil in two or three seasons
- Spread thin across rough ground you never mow closely
- Not into the void under new sod, because it dishes as the wood decays
- Not on a slope above the river or a creek, and not beside a drainage inlet
- Not banked against the trunk of anything you intend to keep alive
Sources
- Town of Ashland City adopted codes and ordinancesMunicipal Floodplain Ordinance 547 and the TDEC stormwater requirements the town posts with its adopted codes
Common Questions
Is the spoil any good on my flower beds?
As a top layer on an established bed, within limits. It is not bagged mulch; it is shredded wood carrying soil, grit and every weed seed that was in the ground around the tree, so it belongs on rough beds and paths rather than around a new planting. Keep it clear of stems and crowns, since wet material packed against bark starts rot, and lay it no more than three inches deep.
There is a spoil pile in the yard from a grind two years ago. Will you take that?
Yes, and it is normally cheaper than you expect, because two years of decomposition has taken a good share of the volume out of it already. What it has gained is weight, since an old pile holds water like a sponge and has usually knitted itself into the ground underneath. Expect it to come out as much soil as wood, and expect a bare patch under it that wants raking and seeding once it is gone.
Can I just set it at the roadside for collection?
No. Kerbside collection here is set up for brush and yard waste, and grinding spoil is a heavy soil-and-wood mixture that does not qualify. In practice it sits at the road through several collection days and then becomes a phone call you did not want. Have us take it, or find a spot on your own property where it can break down out of the way.
We backfilled with chips last year and the lawn has a two-inch dip in it now.
The wood is decomposing and giving up its volume, which is normal behaviour in the wrong location. Open the hollow up, take the loose material out, bring it back to level with screened soil placed and firmed in two or three layers, then seed it. It will move a little more over the following year, so plan on one topdressing next spring and then it is done.