Stump Grinding & Removal

Grinding versus digging out

There are two ways to get rid of a stump. Grinding uses a machine with a rotating cutting wheel to chew the stump and the top of the root flare down into chips, working from the top and the sides until what was a stump is a shallow depression full of grindings. Excavating means digging the whole root plate out with a machine and hauling it away.

Grinding is the right answer nearly every time. It is faster, far less destructive to the surrounding lawn and garden, does not need a machine big enough to lift a root ball, and does not leave a crater. Excavation makes sense in a narrow set of cases: where a foundation or a footing is going in exactly there, where the roots have to be fully out for a service trench, or where a large stump has to be gone rather than merely below grade.

The honest limitation of grinding is that it deals with the stump and the major flare, not every root running out under your lawn. Those stay in the ground and rot down over the following years, which is fine for lawn, planting beds and patio bases, but is worth knowing if you are planning something structural.

How deep, and what you can do afterwards

How far down we grind depends on what you want the space to become, and it is worth telling us at the quote rather than after.

For lawn or sod, six to eight inches below grade is normally plenty. Backfill with topsoil, firm it, seed or lay sod, and inside a season you will not know it was there.

For planting a shrub or a small tree nearby, deeper and wider, and you want most of the grindings removed rather than mixed in. Wood chips tie up nitrogen as they break down, so a bed backfilled with grindings will starve new planting for a year or two. Take the grindings out, backfill with real topsoil, and the new plant has a chance.

For a patio, shed base, driveway or fence line, deeper again, and it needs to be discussed properly. Anything that will be compacted and built on needs the organic material out, because grindings settle as they rot and whatever is sitting on them settles with them.

Do not replant a tree in the same hole. Grinding leaves a large volume of decomposing wood and the residual roots of the old tree, which is a poor rooting environment and, if the previous tree died of a root disease, an actively bad one. Move the new tree a few feet.

Suckering: the reason people call back

Some species do not accept being cut down. Cut the trunk and they push new shoots from the stump and from roots that can run a surprising distance, and you end up mowing a thicket every week. The usual offenders around here are Manitoba maple, black locust, poplar, willow, staghorn sumac, buckthorn, lilac and ash.

Grinding is what actually stops it, because it destroys the stump and the root collar where most of that regrowth originates. Cutting flush and leaving it does not, and neither does most of what gets sold as stump killer for a live stump of a vigorous suckering species.

Even after grinding you may get a season of shoots from remaining lateral roots on the worst species, particularly locust and poplar. Mow or cut them off as they appear and they will exhaust themselves. If you take a suckering species out and skip the grinding, you have not finished the job, you have just started a longer one.

What we need to know before we grind

Buried services. A grinder does not care what it hits. Before we grind, anything buried within reach needs locating: gas, hydro, water, irrigation lines, invisible dog fence, low-voltage garden lighting, septic components and weeping tile. Public utilities can be located free of charge through Ontario One Call, and that locate needs doing before a grinder goes anywhere near. Private lines running from your house to a shed, hot tub, pool or garage are usually not on any locate at all, so if you know about one, tell us. That single sentence prevents most of the expensive surprises in this line of work.

Access. A grinder has to physically get to the stump. Standard machines need roughly a metre of clear width, so a narrow gate, a step down into a yard, a raised deck or a fully enclosed courtyard changes the approach and sometimes the price. Fence panels can often be lifted out and put back rather than cut, and we would rather do that than damage them.

Rocks, walls and edging. Grinding throws debris and dulls teeth on stone. If the stump is set into a rockery, up against a retaining wall, or ringed with decorative edging, we will work around it, but it is slower and the finished depth right at the wall may be limited by what we can reach without damaging it.

Price, cleanup and the grindings

What we need in order to quote a stump is the diameter measured across it at ground level, how hard it is to get to, how deep you need it taken, how much root flare there is, and whether there is stone or a wall in the way. If you have several, mention all of them at once: doing them in a single visit is far less disruptive than a grinder coming back repeatedly.

You get a decision about the grindings. Leaving them and backfilling on top is the normal choice for lawn. Having them hauled away and the hole backfilled with topsoil is the right choice if you are planting or building, so say which you want at the quote and it can be accounted for. Some people want the grindings kept as path or bed mulch, which is fine, and we will pile them where you want them.

A stump does not have to be one of ours. If a previous contractor left you a field of them, or you bought a house with a stump in the lawn, that is normal work. Where the tree is still standing, see tree removal, and grinding can be quoted alongside it so the whole thing is dealt with in one visit.