A guide for Lewisville, NC yards
What Follows When You Leave a Tree Stump in Lewisville
A stump left in the yard does not just sit there. It draws termites and carpenter ants toward the house, sinks into the grass until someone trips on it, feeds a root rot that can reach the trees still standing, and in some neighborhoods earns a violation notice. Here is what each of those looks like, and the one case where a stump should stay.
Free, no-obligation estimates. Tell us how wide it is and how we reach it, and the whole job is quoted on the call.
Leaving a tree stump in Lewisville
A stump left standing rots slowly, draws wood-boring insects and fungi, and becomes a hazard in the lawn around it. The wood does not stay as it was cut: the top greys and checks, the middle goes soft, and while that runs its course over years the stump is a home for termites, carpenter ants and powder-post beetles. Those "wood-destroying" insects do not stay in the stump either; they can spread from it to the nearest structure. At the same time the stump settles and the grass grows up round it, so it gets harder to see each season and more of a tripping hazard, not less.
Then there is what it does to the lawn itself. A stump hidden in the grass damages mowers and other landscaping equipment when a blade catches it, and a live one sends up unwanted shoots from the root flare and the roots around it, so the tree you had taken down keeps trying to come back. Lewisville yards sit under big oaks, hickories and maples, and a wide hardwood stump holds out the longest of all, so each of these runs for years rather than a season. The insects are the first to arrive and the first to get past the stump itself.
The insects it draws
Termites, carpenter ants and wood-boring beetles colonise dead wood and can move from it to the timber of a building nearby. In a warm climate like ours a stump quickly becomes a home for termites and carpenter ants, and from there the risk is structural damage to the house, the deck or the shed within reach. Three wood-boring pests turn up first.
- Termites, tunnelling through the softening wood and outward from it
- Carpenter ants, hollowing galleries in the damp heartwood
- Powder-post beetles, boring the drier sapwood to dust
A stump close to the house is the one to watch, since the nearer the wood, the shorter the trip for all three. The trip hazard is the next thing the stump becomes.
The hazard it becomes in a lawn
Yes: a stump becomes harder to see as it settles and grass grows round it, and it can trip a person or wreck a mower. A leftover stump is a tripping hazard for kids, pets and guests, and a fall over one can mean a sprained ankle or a broken leg. The low grey stump the mower has been steering round for two summers is the one that catches a foot, because by then the grass hides it from anyone who does not know it is there. Stump removal is how Tommy's Stump Grinding describes the whole job of taking that hazard out "below grade", and stump removal has its own page. The fungus is the quieter problem.
What it can pass to other trees
Root-rot fungi established in a stump can spread through the soil to the roots of healthy trees close by. "Armillaria" root rot and honey fungus colonize the dead wood, and from there they travel through the soil to attack the roots of living trees; where the old roots are joined to a neighbor's by "root grafts", they cross that bridge too. That is why a stump between two standing oaks matters more than one alone in the open. The International Society of Arboriculture's TreesAreGood guidance covers the roots and root collars of the trees left standing nearby. The rules that can force the matter are the last piece.
When a rule requires it to go
An HOA, an insurer or a local ordinance can require a stump to be taken out and can serve a notice while it stands. In North Carolina a homeowners' association, an insurance company or a town's regulations may not allow a tree stump to remain, and each can issue a "violation notice" with a date on it. That date is the thing to plan around, and the 811 locate that marks buried lines before grinding takes three business days of notice on its own, so the wait is counted in on our page on the 811 locate. Other questions come up once the stump is going.
Rather it were gone before the ants find it?
Tell us how wide the stump is at ground level and how we reach it, and the whole job is quoted before we start, with no surprise charges after. We answer the phone or call back the same working day, and we show up when we say we will.
More on leaving it
Two further questions follow. Both come up once an owner has read the list above: how long the wait runs if nothing is done at all, and whether there is ever a stump that ought to be left where it stands.
How long the wait runs
Left alone, a stump and its roots can take several years to break down. The finer roots a grinder leaves in the soil decay over three to five years, and a whole stump above them has all of its own wood to lose first. Stump decay, and how long old stumps take to rot by species and width, is followed year by year on our page on stump decay. The US Forest Service's urban forests guidance covers yard trees and the wood that comes off them. The slope is the one exception.
Whether one should ever stay
A stump holding a bank or an embankment together is one worth leaving in place, and you should leave it. We advise against grinding a stump when its roots are keeping a slope or an embankment stable, because those roots are doing a job the bare ground cannot do once they rot, and we do not operate a crane or a bucket truck. Tell us where it stands on the call and we will say which case it is.
What our neighbors say
Tommy came out the same week and took the old maple right down below the lawn. He raked it level before he left and you cannot tell where it stood.
We had three of them and a mess of raised roots along the drive. All of it went in one visit and the spoil went back into the holes.
Needed a big pine out before the new turf went down. Quoted over the phone, done two days later, and the spot was left flat and ready.
Gone in one visit, not five years.
Tell us how wide it is and how we reach it. Free, no-obligation estimates, the whole job quoted before we start, and the spot raked level when we leave.