Stump grinding, start to finish.

What actually happens when the machine turns up, what the yard looks like afterwards, and what we need from you before we start.

14 inMax cut below grade
40 inCutter sweep
35 hpVermeer SC352
1–100Stumps per job

The short version

A wheel with carbide teeth, turned by 35 horsepower, takes the stump apart.

Stump grinding is not digging and it is not pulling. Nothing gets winched out of your lawn and there is no excavator sitting in the drive. A cutting wheel sweeps side to side across the stump, chewing it into coarse wood chips a fraction of an inch at a time, and works down past ground level.

Because the machine only removes what it touches, the ground either side of the stump is left as it was. That is the whole reason grinding won on residential properties: it gets the stump out without taking the yard with it.

What you are left with

The stump gone to below the surface, so you can mow straight over it
A mound of wood grindings sitting where it was, pushed back in with the blade and raked out
The surrounding lawn, beds, fence, drive and irrigation untouched

The grinder working at a small stump in rough brush — Working a stump down in rough ground.

Step by step

What the day looks like.

Before
The call

Tell Lance how many stumps, roughly how big across, and how the machine gets to them. Gate width matters more than anything else you can tell us.
On site
Walking it

We look at where the stumps sit relative to fences, meters, sprinkler heads and anything buried. Mark what you know about; we work around what we can see.
The work
Grinding

Noisy, dusty, and over faster than most people expect. A single average stump is usually a short job rather than a day.
After
Backfill and rake

The blade pushes the grindings back over the hole and it gets raked level enough to walk on. Then we are gone.