Stump Grinding in Lincoya Hills, Donelson
Yes, Lincoya Hills is about seven minutes from us by way of Bell Rd. We keep a couple of slots each week for the acreage lots on this side, so a grind out here usually goes on the board a full week ahead.
Two acres, a ridge, and a stump sitting on rock
The 1950s brick ranches along Lincoya Dr, Lincoya Ct and Robbie Ct sit on some of the largest lots in Donelson, several of them past two acres, and they sit on a ridge. Ridge in this part of Davidson County means limestone close to the surface, sometimes a foot down, sometimes less on the high side of a slope.
Trees deal with that by spreading instead of diving. A white oak or shagbark hickory here will run a wide, flat plate across the top of the rock rather than a taproot into it. Which means when the tree fails and you are left with the stump, the wood is not where a grinder expects it to be, and the rock is exactly where the wheel wants to go. A crew that quotes this like a flat suburban lot is going to have a bad afternoon and you are going to hear about it in the final bill.
What one touch of limestone costs
Carbide teeth are made to chew wood, and they will cut soil and small grit all day. Rock is a different matter. A single solid contact with a limestone shelf can chip or break several teeth at once, and a set of teeth is a real number, not a rounding error.
So we probe first. A steel bar pushed in around the flare at four or five points tells us within a few minutes where the rock sits and how it slopes. Then we work the stump from the downhill side, where there is more soil above the shelf, and take the uphill face in shallow passes with the wheel set high. It is slower, it looks fussy, and it is the reason we are not adding a rock surcharge to your invoice at the end of the day.
The honest version of grinding it ten inches down
Sometimes you cannot. If limestone is at eight inches on the high side of the stump, then eight inches is the floor and no machine is changing that.
What matters is what you were planning to do with the spot. For lawn, eight inches is fine. For a fence post going in the same hole, it is not, and you need to know that before the post company shows up. For a replacement tree, you should probably plant it three feet off the old spot anyway. We tell you where the rock is and what depth we actually reached rather than writing ten inches on an invoice because that is what the standard number is.
Hickory and white oak grind slow, and that shows in the price
The ridge species here are the dense ones. White oak and shagbark hickory are both hard on equipment and slow to feed, and hickory in particular is stringy enough that it comes off in tough ribbons rather than clean chips. Tulip poplar, when you find one on the better soil at the bottom of a lot, is the opposite and grinds like butter.
The cedars scattered across the thin soil are the quick ones too, soft and light, though their root plates spread wider than you would guess for the trunk size. When we quote out here we are pricing time on the wheel, and the species tells us more about that than the tape does.
Crossing two acres to get to one stump
The stump is often four hundred feet from the road. Getting there means driving a machine across a lawn somebody pays to have cut, and on lots this size there is a good chance of a septic field somewhere in the middle of it.
That is worth a serious conversation before the day. A drainfield lateral is shallow, it is fragile, and Tennessee 811 will not mark it because it is private. If you have a plat or a septic permit drawing, dig it out. If you do not, we work from where the tank lid and the vents are and stay well off the likely lines, and we run the machine on the driveway side wherever the geometry allows.
What we check before quoting an acreage lot out here
- Bar probe around the flare to find the limestone depth on both sides of the stump
- Which side of the slope the machine can work from without meeting rock
- Species called from bark and leaf litter, since hickory and white oak change the clock
- Location of the septic tank, vents and likely drainfield before anything drives over the lawn
- Distance from the nearest hard surface, because spoil shuttling on two acres is real time
- Whether the spot has a fence post, a shed pad or a replant going into it afterward
What we do in Lincoya Hills
Questions from the Lincoya ridge
You hit rock. Do I still pay the full quote?
You pay what we quoted, which is the point of probing before we price. If the probe says the shelf is at eight inches we build the job around eight inches and tell you that up front, so there is no mid-job renegotiation. The only time a price moves is if you ask for something different once we are there, and we would call you before touching it.
How do you know where my septic field is?
We do not, and that is exactly why we ask. A locate crew will not mark it because it is on your side of the meter. The best sources are your septic permit drawing from the county or the original plat. Failing that, we work off the tank lid position and keep the machine on the drive side. If we cannot get to the stump without crossing unknown ground, we will say so rather than chance it.
Can you reach a stump at the back of two acres without rutting the lawn?
In dry conditions, yes, and the tracks a walk-behind leaves in firm turf brush out in a mow or two. After a wet spell it is a different question and we would rather move you a few days than leave you with wheel marks across four hundred feet of grass. Sod that has been down for sixty years is tougher than new turf, which helps out here.
What does a big hickory stump run?
Toward the top of the residential range, because it is time on the wheel rather than a size bracket. A thirty-inch shagbark with rock on one side can occupy most of a morning, where a thirty-inch poplar on good soil is an hour. Send a photo of the cut face and the base and we will tell you which of those two afternoons yours looks like.