Below grade
Stump grinding
A stump grinder cuts the stump below grade, the chips are cleaned up, and the lawn is ready to close over the spot.
A stump that stays keeps costing you
The tree is the part everyone notices. The stump is the part that bites you for the next ten years. It catches the mower deck, it throws up suckers every spring, and it keeps the lawn from closing over the spot where the tree used to stand.
Left alone, a stump also rots from the outside in, and that soft wood is where carpenter ants and fungus settle in. For a property in Locust Grove, Orange or Spotsylvania, that is usually the moment to call and get the stump ground out.
Yellow 4400-D stump grinder mid-cut on a lawn, wood chips thrown out around the stump
The grinder cuts below grade
Premier's published stump list is short and plain: grinding, stump removal, lot clearing and lot grading. In their words, "Using state-of-the-art equipment, we'll safely remove and discard all of the unwanted stumps on your property." The yellow 4400-D in the photo is the machine that does the cutting.
A grinder works by swinging a toothed wheel across the stump a little at a time, working down below the soil line until the wood is chips. Grinding is the right call for a single stump in a yard. Full stump removal, roots and all, makes sense when something is going to be built or planted in the exact spot, and Scott will tell you which one your stump needs when he walks the property.
The chips can be raked back into the hole or hauled off. Scott Keen is on the job the whole time, so the call about where the chips go gets made on the spot, not left to a crew who never saw your yard.
Closing the lawn over the old stump
Once the grinder is done, the hole is just ground. Top it off with soil, then seed or sod, and give the new growth a season before you plant anything close. If you want a tree back in that corner, set it a few feet off the old stump's footprint so its roots are not growing through a bed of decaying chips.
Grinding goes smoothly right after a removal, so most people ask for it on the same visit. Scott's crew chips the limbs, hauls the debris and can grind the stumps before they leave. When a whole property needs it, as with an overgrown acre near Fredericksburg or Lake Anna, stump work rolls into lot clearing and grading as one job.
Call (540) 718-3794 any hour of the day. Estimates are free, and a missed call is returned within 24 hours.
Scott Bouldin, Lake Anna: "Scott and his crew took down four trees and ground down the stumps."