Wood Chip and Grinding Spoil Removal in Trousdale County

Run the Chip Volume Before Stump Grinding in Hartsville

A ground stump does not produce a stump-sized pile. Wood that was compacted into growth rings comes off the wheel as loose chip mixed with soil, and it occupies two to three times the space people picture. A thirty-inch stump ground to ten inches below grade yields somewhere around a cubic yard and a half to two cubic yards loose. A half-ton pickup bed, level with the rails, holds about two.

So one decent stump is a full truck load. Four stumps is four trips.

That matters here because there is no chip route in this county. No brush truck comes down your road, there is no curbside yard-waste collection, and nothing gets set out at the mailbox. The Convenience Center on Broadway does take brush, limbs, stumps and yard waste, weekdays only, seven-thirty to four-thirty and closed at weekends — but the posted cap is roughly a single level pickup load a day and no more. Do the arithmetic on a four-stump job and it is most of a working week of driving.

Six Inches of Stump Spoil Fixes a Trousdale Gate Approach

The gate approach that turns to soup every February is the best use of grinding spoil in this county. Six inches of it, spread and walked in, gives a cattle gate or a hay barn door an approach you can cross in boots. It will need topping up every couple of years, and it is free.

After that: the two-rut lane back to a stand or a pond, the low spot where the tractor spins coming out of a field, the base of a burn pile, and a windrow behind a windbreak where nothing is growing anyway.

Where it should not go. Not in the hole under new grass — it settles and you get a dish. Not banked against a barn sill, a wooden post or house siding, because damp wood against wood is how termites get an introduction. Not into a vegetable bed as-is, because fresh wood ties up nitrogen in the root zone for a season or two. And not spread thick over turf you care about; three inches is mulch, eight inches is a dead patch.

Wire in Stump Spoil Is a Hay Problem, Not a Tidiness One

This is the one that matters most here and almost nobody thinks about it. Spoil from a fencerow stump — hedge, locust, cedar off an old boundary — is full of staples, brads and short lengths of wire that came out of the wood with everything else. Spread that on a field you cut hay off and the wire goes into a windrow, through a baler, into a bale, into a feed ring and into a cow. Hardware disease is a real veterinary bill and an occasional dead animal.

So spoil off any stump that stood on a fence line does not go anywhere hay is cut or stock is fed. It goes on a lane, in a burn pile base, or it leaves on the trailer. We will tell you which stumps produced suspect spoil, because we are the ones who found the metal.

The same applies to storm-stump spoil. Shingle grit, nails and roofing tin fragments come out of a torn stump in quantity.

Backfill, Settling and What Stump Chip Haul-Off Costs

The standard finish is spoil back in the void, crowned two or three inches, surplus piled where you say. Crowning is not laziness. A void filled level today is a dish in eighteen months as the wood breaks down, and the second visit to fix it costs more than the crown did.

If you want grass on that spot inside a season, ask for the spoil out and screened topsoil in. Figure on a wheelbarrow and a half of topsoil for an average stump. That is a small add-on and it is the difference between seeding in September and seeding twice.

Full haul-off is priced by the load rather than as a percentage, and on a single mid-size stump it is usually somewhere between a third and a half again on top of the grinding. On acreage we will tell you plainly if we think you are paying to remove something you could use, because a customer who spends money on a pointless haul does not call back.

Places on a farm where grinding spoil does some good

• Gate approaches and the muddy strip inside a field gate
• The lane to a pond, a stand or a back barn where two ruts have formed
• Base course under a burn pile, to keep it up out of standing water
• Behind a windbreak or along a fence line nobody mows
• A path through a wood lot, three inches deep, topped up every other year
• Never in a stall, a paddock or a chicken house
• Never against a wooden sill, post or siding, and never on a hay field if it came out of a fencerow