Lewisville, NC and Forsyth County
Tree Stump Grinding in Lewisville
We grind the stump in your Lewisville yard to chips below the lawn and rake the spot level before we leave. Tell us how wide it is and how we reach it, and the quote is set on the call.
Free, no-obligation estimates. We quote the whole job before we start, with no surprise charges after.
Tree stump grinding in Lewisville
Stump grinding cuts a tree stump into chips with a rotating carbide wheel and takes it below the level of the lawn. The machine is a stump grinder: a cutting disk with fixed carbide teeth spins at high speed and shaves the stump and its root flare into small wood chips, pass after pass, until the wood is gone several inches under the surface. The trade calls that finish "below grade", and it is what lets grass grow back over the spot. A mower runs over the place a few weeks later as if the tree had never been there.
Tommy's Stump Grinding does this one job in Lewisville, NC and the towns around it: the stump left after a tree comes down, the old one in the lawn you have been mowing around, the row of shrub stubs along a fence. Nothing is dug out, no truck crosses the yard, and the visit ends with the chips raked level and the lawn ready to seed.
What happens when you call Tommy's
A call gets a description of the stump's width and the path to it, then a quote, then a visit that grinds the stump and rakes the spoil level. The visit runs in a fixed order.
- QuoteYou tell us how wide the stump is at ground level and how we reach it, and we quote the whole job.
- Utility locateBuried lines near the stump are marked before the machine arrives, through the free 811 ticket.
- Low cutA stump still standing tall gets a fresh "low cut" so the wheel starts close to the turf.
- GrindThe wheel shaves the stump and its root flare into chips until all of it sits below grade.
- Rake levelThe chips are raked back into the hole and smoothed flat, or hauled away when you ask.
How the price is set
The price follows the stump's width at ground level, and species, age and access move it up or down. A wide, fresh oak takes more passes than a narrow pine that has sat for years, and a stump behind a gate takes more setting up than one beside the drive. Several stumps on one visit are priced together, since the trip and the setup are paid once. We quote the whole job before we start, and the bands behind a stump grinding cost, inch by inch, are laid out on our page on what stump grinding costs.
How long a visit takes
A typical stump can be ground in well under a morning, and wide or dense stumps take longest because every extra inch means more passes. Width is the biggest factor by far: the work grows faster than the inches do, so a stump twice as wide is well more than twice the grinding. Hardwood slows it further, and a rocky patch of Piedmont clay dulls the teeth and slows it again. Setup and raking take their share too, which is why several stumps in one yard go quicker per stump than the same stumps on separate days. The wide ones are their own case.
Large stumps and hardwoods
A large stump is one past two feet across, and a dense hardwood such as oak or hickory grinds slower than pine at the same width. Oak, maple and hickory resist the carbide teeth, so the wheel takes thinner bites and more of them, while pine, poplar and willow give way fast. The root flare on an old oak spreads wide at the base, and all of it is ground, not just the trunk. Width and species are the two things to tell us on the call; from those we know the time to allow. Anything under a foot across is a different job.
Small stumps, shrubs and hedgerows
A small stump is an ornamental or shrub stump under a foot across, and the same machine grinds a hedgerow of them in a row. Crepe myrtles, hollies, boxwoods and the privet that came out with the old fence all leave stubs and roots that stop a mower and hold up the next bed. The wheel takes them one after another in a single pass down the line, in residential yards and on commercial sites alike, and a row of them is quoted as one visit, not stub by stub. Getting the machine into that yard is the next question.
Residential yards, gates and tight spots
The machine reaches any stump it rolls to, through a standard gate and up to fences and foundations. A compact, rubber-tracked grinder fits a 36-inch opening and works within inches of a wall, a patio or a driveway, so the fenced backyard is no harder than the front lawn. The tracks spread its weight, and no truck comes past the gate. Every residential stump grinding job in a yard the family uses, from the play set to the pool fence, is covered on our page on residential stump grinding. A commercial site is a different scale.
Commercial lots and common areas
Commercial work is many stumps on one site, from a cleared lot to an HOA common area, priced for the visit rather than the stump. A stump left in a common area is a trip hazard, and the property owner carries the liability for the fall it causes, so the stumps along a walk or a parking island tend to go together. Because the trip and the setup are paid once, ten stumps on one visit cost far less each than ten separate visits. How we price commercial stump grinding for property managers, builders and boards is set out under commercial lots and HOAs. How soon depends on the route.
Same-day and short-notice work
Same-day and short-notice grinding can fit when the day's route passes near you, and a stump in the way of a closing, a build or a repair goes to the front of the schedule when the route allows. Call and say what the stump is holding up; if the route reaches Lewisville that day, we say so, and if it does not, we give you the first day it does. We answer the phone or call back the same working day, and we show up when we say we will.
Common questions before grinding
The questions below are answered in full on their own pages. Here is the short version of each, the ones Lewisville homeowners ask most before the machine comes.
The depth the stump is ground to
The stump is ground several inches below the lawn, deep enough for grass to grow over the spot. Six to eight inches under the surface is the usual finish, and it takes the growth point with it so the stump does not sprout again. A new tree in the same place needs more: the stump grinding depth for a lawn and the deeper depth for replanting are both on our depth page.
What is left in the hole afterward
Grinding leaves a pile of "spoil" beside a hole, and the spoil is raked back into it unless it is hauled away. The chips settle over a season as they break down, so the spot sits a little low for a while and takes a topping of soil before seed. After stump grinding, the hole, the chips and the settling are all explained under what happens to the hole.
The utility locate before the visit
Buried lines near the stump are marked before grinding, through the free locate a call to 811 starts. 811 is the national "Call Before You Dig" line, and the gas, water and power companies mark their lines at no cost. North Carolina 811 wants three business days' notice on an 811 locate ticket, and we need the ticket number before the wheel touches the ground, so our 811 locate page walks through when to make that call.
Grinding and removal: the depth each reaches
Grinding is the usual form of stump removal, and digging out the root ball is a separate, costlier job. Grinding takes the stump and the top of its roots and leaves the deep roots to rot; excavation pulls the whole root ball and typically runs two to four times the price of grinding, with a bigger hole and heavier equipment to match. Full stump removal against grinding, side by side on cost and depth, is on its own page.
Surface roots in the same visit
The roots that run out from the stump near the surface are ground in the same visit, and the deeper roots stay in the ground to decay. Each raised root is chased and taken two to four inches under the grade around it, so the mower passes and nobody trips, while the structural roots below are left to break down on their own. When the raised roots are the whole problem and the stump is long gone, that surface root work is the same grinding on its own job; see surface root grinding.
What our neighbors say
Tommy came out the same week and took the old maple right down below the lawn. He raked it level before he left and you cannot tell where it stood.
We had three of them and a mess of raised roots along the drive. All of it went in one visit and the spoil went back into the holes.
Needed a big pine out before the new turf went down. Quoted over the phone, done two days later, and the spot was left flat and ready.
Where we work: Lewisville, Forsyth County and the towns around
We are based on Shallowford Road in Lewisville, NC, and we work across Forsyth County and the towns within about twenty miles of it. The map shows the home base, and the list below shows where the machine goes most weeks.
We also take calls from Bermuda Run, Farmington, Tobaccoville, East Bend, Rural Hall, Advance, Smithtown and Yadkinville. A job farther out than that is a question for the call.
One call. One visit. A level lawn.
Tell us how wide the stump is and how we reach it. We quote the whole job before we start, we show up when we say we will, and we clean up when the work is done.