Kernersville, North Carolina, Forsyth County
Grinding Several Stumps in Kernersville
The typical Kernersville house went up around 1993, and thirty-odd years on, the trees planted with it are coming down a few at a time. Once the leaves are off in the fall, plenty of yards here are being mowed around two or three stumps at once. We take the lot of them below the lawn on a single trip and rake every spot level before we go.
Free, no-obligation estimates. Count the stumps, measure the widest one at the base, and the whole trip is priced on the call.
Stump grinding in Kernersville, NC
Tommy's Stump Grinding grinds every stump on a Kernersville lot to chips below grade in one visit, then rakes the "spoil" back level over each hole. A stump left in a lawn laid out in the early nineties is on its way to becoming a repair: the heartwood softens, suckers push up from the "root flare", and one Saturday the mower blade finds the hidden edge of it. Two or three of them, left by trees that came down a season apart, are two or three of those waiting to happen, and the cheapest time to deal with them is together, before the first one costs you a blade or an ankle.
That is the visit this page is about. From the older streets behind Downtown and the lots near the Paul J. Ciener Botanical Garden out to Sedge Garden, East Kernersville, Union Cross and Union Cross-Teague, the machine is the same and so is the finish: the wheel shaves each stump and its flare into chips, pass after pass, until the wood sits six to twelve inches under the turf, and the chip-and-soil mix is raked flat so grass closes over the spot. Nothing is dug, no truck crosses the grass, and the trailer is hitched once for the whole lot rather than once per stump. What a single visit takes in, stump by stump, is next.
What one visit covers
One visit takes in the "low cut", the grind down through the root flare to below grade, and the rake back, for every stump on the list. One visit runs in a fixed order.
- Low cutAny stump left standing tall is sawn off near the turf first, so the wheel begins its work at lawn height instead of a foot above it.
- Utility locateThe gas, water and power lines around each stump are marked on the free 811 ticket before the machine comes off the trailer.
- Grind below gradeThe carbide wheel shaves the stump and its surface roots to chips six to twelve inches under the lawn, then tracks across to the next one.
- Rake levelThe chips and soil go back into each hole and are raked flush with the turf, or the pile is loaded and hauled off when that is what you asked for.
The plain name Tommy's Stump Grinding gives that whole visit is stump removal, and the page on stump removal goes through each part of it at length. Which corners of Kernersville the tracks reach is the next question.
The parts of Kernersville the machine reaches
The work is done all over Kernersville, in family yards and on managed grounds alike, anywhere the machine walks itself to the stump on its rubber tracks. It fits a three-foot gate and rolls across turf without cutting ruts, so a fenced back yard in Quail Hollow, Copperfield or Fox Run is reached the same way as an open corner lot in Glennwood Acres or Timber Trails: off the trailer at the curb, across the grass, from one stump to the next.
A little over half of the occupied homes in town are lived in by their owners, and the rest are rented or managed, so the call comes from a landlord, a board or a property manager nearly as often as from the family that mows the yard. For the homeowner that is the residential job; for the manager it is the commercial one, the row of stumps along a common area near Century Lake Park or the cleared edge of a lot out toward Triad Park, and the machine treats them alike. What each spot looks like once it rolls off is next.
What the job leaves on the spot
What the job leaves at each stump is a filled, level spot, with the deeper roots still in the soil to rot down on their own. "Standard residential grinding" stops six to twelve inches under the lawn; the crew then packs the hollow with the chip-and-soil mix the wheel made, rakes it flush and clears the loose debris off the grass around it. The wheel reaches the stump you see and the big surface roots for three to five feet around it, eight to twelve inches down, and the finer roots below that stay put and break down over three to five years, out of sight once the turf knits over. With several stumps on one lot, that is several of those circles, and each one settles a touch through its first season as the chips shrink. Once the stump grinding is done, the hole under each circle is what settles, and that whole first year is told on the page on what happens to the hole. Before any of it comes the price.
The question Kernersville owners ask first
Price is the first thing a Kernersville owner asks about, and the price follows how wide each stump is at ground level. "Stump diameter is the primary pricing driver," as the trade puts it, because a wider stump takes more passes, more time on the machine and more chips to manage afterward, so a count of the stumps and the width of the widest one, surface roots included, are the two numbers to have ready when you call. The count works in your favor. Across the trade, grinding several stumps on one visit brings the per-stump figure down by roughly 30 to 50 percent against the same stumps on separate trips, because travel and setup are the biggest part of the cost and here they are paid once. We quote the whole visit before we start, with no surprise charges after. The bands a stump grinding cost falls into, width by width, are laid out on our page on what stump grinding costs. The towns next door go on the same terms.
Count them, measure the widest, and the rest is ours
Tell us how many stumps there are, how wide the biggest is at the base, and how we get the machine to each one. The whole trip is quoted on that one call, we show up when we say we will, and we clean up when the work is done. A call that goes to voicemail is returned the same working day.
More in the towns next door
The towns next door ride the same round as Kernersville. The trailer that comes out this way from Lewisville makes its other stops in Walkertown, Winston-Salem, Bethania and Clemmons, and what differs between them is the yard, never the visit. Three of them have a page of their own, each about the thing its yards ask of the machine most.
The same round takes in Clemmons
Clemmons is on the Kernersville round too. Stump grinding in the fenced yards and on the open lots of that village has a page to itself, under yards and lots in Clemmons.
The same round takes in Bethania
Bethania is on it as well. Stump grinding where old trees came down long ago and left wide, weathered stumps behind is the subject of older stumps in Bethania.
The same round takes in Winston-Salem
Winston-Salem is on it too. Stump grinding there is mostly a matter of narrow gates and the fenced city yards behind them, which is what narrow gates in Winston-Salem is about.
Booking a Kernersville job
Yes: a Kernersville job goes on the calendar with the same call as a job on our own road in Lewisville. Say the neighborhood, the count, the width of the widest stump and the way in, and the trip is priced before the trailer moves. Every tree stump we take on, the grinding and the raking after it, begins on our home page under tree stump grinding.
Three visits, in the owners' words
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.
Where Kernersville sits in the area we serve
We work out of Lewisville, NC, and Kernersville is one of the towns inside the area we cover from there. The same rounds take in Clemmons, Bethania, Winston-Salem, King and Walkertown, and a stump a little past the edge of that map is something to ask about on the call.
Give us the town along with the count and the width, and the trip is part of the quote.
Count them. One trip. All level.
Free, no-obligation estimates across Kernersville and Forsyth County. The whole lot is quoted before we start, and every spot is raked flat before we pull out.