Stump Grinding in Chickering Hills, Forest Hills
Chickering Hills, Crater Hill Drive included: yes. Four minutes from our yard, and on a rebuild lot we can usually slot a grind into the gap between the excavator pulling off and the forms going in. Anything leaning on a house gets seen same or next day.
The stump is not the problem. The date is
Half of what we grind on Crater Hill Drive and the Chickering Road end of Tyne Boulevard has nothing to do with a homeowner's mower. It is a builder's problem: a 1950s ranch came down, the excavator scraped the pad, and there are three stumps left inside the new footprint that nobody can pour over.
Wood left under a slab does not stay wood. It rots, it loses volume, and the concrete over it finds the void eventually - usually five or six years in, which is the worst possible time for everyone involved. So the grind has to happen, and it has to happen in a specific week, between demolition and footings, on a lot where a 6,000-square-foot house is being fitted onto an acre that already slopes.
The other half is the surviving owners. Somebody who has been on this street since the ranches went up now has a construction site next door, a dead ash of their own, and no patience left for a stump in the side yard.
Where the grind belongs in the sequence
Inside a building footprint, the standard depth is not the standard depth. Six to twelve inches under grade is right for a lawn; under a slab, a footing or a driveway we go deeper and chase the laterals outward, because anything organic left in the bearing zone is a settlement crack waiting for a date.
We also want the grindings out rather than backfilled there. On a lawn job leaving the chip is usually the sensible answer. Inside a footprint it is the opposite - fill under a slab wants clean compactable material, not a wheelbarrow's worth of decomposing oak. Say the word when you book and the truck comes with room for it.
The timing that works best is right after the pad is scraped and before anyone lays out string. Once the forms are set there is no path for a machine to the middle of the building, and the answer becomes a mini-excavator and a lot more money.
One acre, a grade, and four trades wanting the same spot
Rebuild lots here are tight in a way that has nothing to do with lot lines. There is a dumpster at the top of the drive, a portable toilet somebody put in the only flat corner, a stack of block, and a slope that means all of it had to go where it went.
We plan around that instead of arguing with it. Give us the site super's number and a window, and we will bring the machine that fits the remaining path rather than the one we would rather use. Where the only route to the back of the pad crosses fresh fill, we would rather come the day after a dry stretch than cut ruts somebody else has to fix.
And if the schedule slips - it does - we would rather be told and rebooked than show up to a lot with an excavator still sitting on it.
What survives demolition is what we are grinding
The trees that made this a desirable teardown street in the first place are the ones the city protects. Original white oak, chinkapin oak and shagbark hickory from before the 1950s houses went up cannot simply be scraped, because Forest Hills reviews removals of eight-inch-caliper and larger trees and holds a canopy retention ratio on every lot. Clear-cutting is out of the question here.
So the mature hardwood usually stays and the builder works around it, which means most of what we take out on a rebuild is either something that was already dead - green ash is the usual answer - or a mid-century yard tree the plan cannot accommodate.
The hardwood ones grind slowly. A chinkapin oak that has been standing since before the neighborhood existed will have a base far wider than the trunk suggests, and it should be quoted as a half-day rather than an hour.
What we do in Chickering Hills
Nearby Forest Hills neighborhoods
Questions from builders and neighbors on Crater Hill
How deep do you grind if a slab is going over it?
Deeper than a lawn grind, and wider. We take the main mass well below the bearing surface and then follow the big laterals out until they are small enough not to matter, because settlement comes from the roots as often as the stump. The exact depth depends on what the plan calls for under the slab, so we would rather read that number off the drawing than guess it.
Can you invoice the builder rather than the homeowner?
Yes, that is most of what we do on this street. We need the billing name and a PO or job number if the builder uses them, and we need to know who on site can confirm the work is done. What we will not do is start on a lot where nobody can tell us which stumps are in scope - that conversation costs everyone more than the phone call would have.
My neighbor's build has compacted my side yard. Does that change the grind?
It does. Ground driven over by loaded trucks packs hard, and a wheel cutting through it throws far more dust and far less loose chip than the same stump would in soft lawn. We slow the feed rather than force it, and we warn you that the fill will settle differently - packed ground under the hole does not take the chip back the way undisturbed soil does.
Is there anything I should mark on an active site?
Temporary power, the water line the crew tapped, and any silt fence or erosion control you do not want driven over. Tennessee 811 covers the permanent buried utilities and we file it, but a temporary service run across a lot on a rebuild is exactly the kind of thing that exists on nobody's map and gets caught by a wheel.