Stump Grinding in Stratton Hills, Ashland City, TN
Booked three to five working days out is normal for Stratton Hills, and it is about three minutes from the shop. Yes, we cover the whole plat — Stratton Blvd, Katye Ct, Gloria Cir. Anything hung up or leaning skips the queue.
Two generations of tree failing on the same lot
Stratton Hills was built in pieces between 1962 and 1988, and 1987 is the single most common year in the parcel file. That produced a plat where a lot of properties carry two distinct plantings.
Out back are the silver maples that went in when the earlier sections were new. At sixty-plus years they are sixty to seventy feet, and they fail the way silver maple fails: at the union where two leaders meet, taking half the canopy with them. Out front, on the later section, are Bradford pears from 1987 that are now thirty-eight years old and well past the age at which anybody expects them to hold together.
So the call from this street is very often for two stumps in two places on one parcel, and they are not the same job.
Deep Lots and a Carport Instead of a Gate
Lots here run four tenths of an acre to three quarters and they are notably deeper than they are wide, with a mean near two thirds of an acre. Depth is the friendly part: there is room to work once you are back there.
Getting back there is the problem, because on the older sections the side of the house is taken up by an attached carport. People assume a carport is an open route and it is not. The clearance is set by the post spacing and by the roof beam overhead, and both are usually tighter than the width of the drive that leads to them. Measure post to post, then look up.
Where the carport will not pass a machine, the alternatives on this plat are the far side of the house, or in from the rear where lots on Katye and Gloria back onto one another. That second option needs a neighbour's agreement arranged before the day, not on it.
What a Sixty-Year-Old Silver Maple Leaves Behind
A maple that split at the union usually gets taken to a low stump, and what is left is not a cylinder. It is a wide, buttressed base that flares hard at the ground, often past forty inches across the flare on a trunk you would have called thirty.
The flare is the work. The middle of a maple stump is soft and goes quickly; the perimeter, where the wood turns hard and the roots leave, is where the hours are. That is also why the price on these should never be quoted off a trunk measurement taken at chest height. Measure across the ground at the widest point and photograph it with a tape lying on it, and the quote you get will be the one you are invoiced.
Silver maple will also push from a plate left in the ground, so on this species we take the buttress out rather than levelling the top and calling it done.
Both Stumps on One Visit
The reason we ask whether the front pear is also on your list is straightforward. The costly parts of a small job are the trip, the unloading and the tidy-up, and none of them happen twice if both stumps come out the same morning.
A 1987 pear on its own is close to the minimum service call and feels expensive for what it is. Added onto a maple grind that is already booked, it is a small fraction of that. If you have a dead leyland or two on the back line, put them on the same list; the marginal cost of an extra small stump while the machine is already sitting in your yard is the cheapest work we sell.
What we will not do is quote three stumps as one lump and then find a fourth. Walk the lot once, count properly, and the number holds.
Before you call from Stratton Boulevard
- Measure the maple across the ground at its widest, not around the trunk at waist height
- Measure the carport post to post, and check the beam height while you are there
- Count every stump on the parcel, including anything already cut low and hidden in a bed
- Note whether the split maple is still standing or already down, since that changes the whole job
- Say if a fence went in after the tree, because that is usually what made the access tight
- Tell us if the back of the lot is the easier way in, and whether the neighbour is agreeable
Sources
- Cheatham County Assessor of PropertyRecorded year built and acreage for the Stratton Hills sections, including the 1987 build-out
What we do in Stratton Hills
Stratton Hills questions
The maple split in a storm and half of it is still standing. Do you deal with that?
That part is a tree removal and we will tell you so plainly. What we do is the ground work after it: the stump, the buttress and the surface roots. On a hazard like that we will still come and look quickly, because a leaning stub over a drive is not something to leave sitting while you collect quotes, and we can usually tell you within a day whether it is urgent or whether it will keep until next week.
Why is my little front pear almost as expensive as the big maple out back?
Because a job has a floor. Fuel, the trailer, the drive, the walk-round, the clean-up and the insurance on the machine all cost the same whether the stump is twelve inches or forty. A small stump on its own is paying for all of that by itself. Two or three at once share it, which is why the second stump on any visit prices well below the first and the third below the second.
Will you get the roots that run under my patio?
The ones we can reach without lifting the slab, yes, and we will follow a main root out to a sensible distance from the stump. What we do not do is chase wood under concrete, because the only ways to do that are to break the slab or to undermine it, and neither is an improvement. Once the stump is gone the roots underneath stop growing, so the situation stops getting worse even where the wood stays.
Is there a difference between grinding in summer and in winter here?
On this plat, not much, and winter is often better. These are upland lots that drain, so unlike the bottom ground they do not go out of service for a week after a rise. What winter actually buys you is a clear view: with the leaves off you can see the whole yard, the fence lines and the back boundary, which makes counting stumps and planning the route considerably easier.
Do you take the grindings away?
Either way, and you decide at the quote rather than at the end. Left on site, a maple pile will settle and rot down over a couple of seasons if it is spread rather than heaped. Taken away, it is priced by volume, and a wide-flared maple produces a good deal more than people picture. What we will not do is push it back into the void and turf over it, because that is a dish waiting to happen.