Stump Grinding in Lake Park, Hermitage
Lake Park is served, yes. Figure twelve minutes from our side of Hermitage down New Hope Road. We hold weekday afternoon slots for this end of the map, quote from a photo within a couple of hours, and get most jobs done inside a week of the go-ahead.
Every stump here is downhill of the house
Lake Park was laid out in the seventies on ground that falls toward J. Percy Priest, and the houses were designed for it: split-foyers, tri-levels and walkout basements sitting on lots that run half an acre to three-quarters, one of them measured at 78 feet wide by 339 feet deep. The lots were carved out of standing woods and the woods were mostly left, which is the whole appeal of living here.
It also means that when a white oak or a shagbark hickory goes, and after fifty years several are going, the stump is not in a flat back yard. It is on a side slope below the deck, somewhere between the walkout door and the tree line, on ground that drops six or eight feet across the working area. You cannot mow it, you cannot walk past it safely in wet leaves, and any attempt to level around it just puts loose dirt on a hill.
The practical trigger is usually one of three things: a deck or retaining wall going in, a septic or drainage issue that put a contractor on the slope, or the day somebody slips on it. Then it stops being scenery and starts being a job.
Grinding across a slope is a different discipline
A stump grinder is a wheel spinning at the end of a boom on a machine that wants level ground. On a cross-slope, the low side of the cut wants to run deeper than the high side, gravity is pulling the whole machine downhill while the wheel is trying to push it sideways, and the operator is fighting both at once.
The way we handle it is boring and it works. Approach from above where there is a path, cut in narrow horizontal bands rather than deep plunges, reset the machine three or four times on a stump that would take one setup on flat ground, and pin the tracks with mats where the ground is loose. It takes longer than the same stump would in Hermitage Hills and the quote reflects the setups, not the diameter alone.
What we will not do is work a slope that is wet. Saturated clay on an eight-foot fall is how a machine ends up in a ravine, and no stump is worth that. If it has rained hard in the last two days, expect us to look at the forecast before confirming.
The chips want to go into the lake and they cannot
Grindings on a hillside do not stay put. Left in a pile below a stump, the first heavy rain moves them downhill in a slurry, and on these lots downhill eventually means the Corps of Engineers shoreline buffer around Percy Priest. Nobody wants a wood-chip fan spreading into a federal buffer strip, and washing organic material toward a reservoir is bad practice regardless of whose land it lands on.
So on the lower lots we either haul it out entirely or berm it uphill of the hole with a silt sock or a straw wattle downslope of the pile until it settles. Hauling is cleaner and it is what most people here choose once they understand the alternative.
On the upper streets, where the ground behind the house is closer to level, the calculus flips. There is plenty of room and plenty of woods edge, and spreading the material thin under the trees is genuinely the sensible answer. It comes down to where on the hill you sit, which is why we ask for a photo showing the slope rather than a close-up of the stump.
White oak, hickory and walnut: the slow, expensive end of the list
The trees that came with these lots are the good stuff, which unfortunately also means the hard stuff. Mature white oak is dense and holds a wide, deep root plate. Shagbark hickory is the toughest wood in common Middle Tennessee yards and it will change teeth on a single stump. Black walnut is not quite as brutal but the root system runs deep and the wood is worth something, so a few people out here have us cut the trunk into millable lengths before we touch the stump.
Virginia pine and eastern red cedar are the fast ones. Both are resinous, both gum a wheel, and cedar shavings in particular will perfume a whole hillside for a week. Neither takes long.
On walnut, one thing to know: juglone in the roots and shavings suppresses tomatoes, azaleas and a long list of other plants. If you intend to garden where a walnut stood, the shavings need to leave rather than get raked into the bed.
Details that change a Lake Park quote
- How far the ground falls across the ten feet around the stump
- Whether there is a route down from the driveway or only steps off a deck
- Distance to the property line and to the Corps buffer below it
- Species, since hickory and white oak run well above pine of the same size
- Recent rain, because saturated clay on a slope postpones the visit
- Whether the grindings go up the hill, into the woods edge, or onto the trailer
What we do in Lake Park
What Port Anadarko and New Castle homeowners ask
The stump is below my walkout and the only way down is the deck stairs. Now what?
We do not take machines down stairs. What we look for instead is a route around the end of the house or in from a neighbor's flatter side with their permission, and on the deep lots here there usually is one. Where there genuinely is not, the answer is a smaller machine winched down on mats, which costs more and takes longer. Send a photo taken from the top of the stairs and we can tell you which case you are in.
Does the Corps of Engineers have any say over a stump in my own yard?
Not over your yard. Their interest starts at the shoreline boundary of the Percy Priest project, and some Lake Park lots back right onto it. The practical rule is that nothing we generate should end up on the far side of that line, which is why we control where the chips go on the lower lots rather than piling and leaving.
I have four stumps on the hill from trees that came out over the years. Worth doing at once?
Considerably. The expensive part of a sloped job is setup, matting and repositioning, and once the machine and the mats are down there we are already past most of that overhead. Four stumps in one visit lands well under four separate calls. Photograph all of them with something for scale and we will price the group.
Can you save the walnut trunk for lumber?
Yes, if you tell us before the tree comes down, which means telling whoever is felling it rather than us. Sawyers want straight sections cut to length with the crotches and metal-free wood identified. Once the stump is the only thing left there is nothing millable to save. We will happily leave the flare cut high if a slab is what you are after.