Stump Grinding in Vidor, TX

Stump Grinding & Removal Services in Vidor, TX

On ground as wet as Vidor's, how a stump comes out matters as much as whether it does. Pull a big root plate out of a soaked yard here and the hole starts filling with water before anyone can backfill it. Grind the same stump and the yard around it hardly changes. That is why most stump work in this town is grinding, and why the finish on the spot gets as much attention as the stump. Nine miles down the interstate, a Vidor stump is close enough to be worth a trip by itself. One stump or a dozen, the walk and the estimate are the same.

Vidor sits low in Orange County with the Neches to the west and the Sabine to the east, and the water between them moves through bayous and ditches that fill fast and empty slowly. Rita, Harvey and Imelda each put water across this town, and the trees took the damage in their roots rather than their crowns. Water oak and sweetgum that stood in floodwater for days have been thinning out and coming down ever since, which means a lot of Vidor yards now have a stump where a shade tree used to be. The ground itself is the main reason the method matters. This is flat Gulf Coast clay that stays saturated for weeks after an ordinary rain. Grinding takes the stump down in place and leaves a modest hole of chips. Pulling leaves a crater, and in clay that wet the crater turns into a pond and the backfill will not compact until it dries. On a yard that has to stay usable, that settles the question. The ditches are the other local factor. Drainage in this part of the county is shared and slow, and a pile of grindings or loose soil raked toward the road ends up in the ditch on the next rain and from there in the neighbor's culvert. On a Vidor job the grindings go back in the hole, onto your beds or onto the truck, never toward the drainage. Off the farm-to-market roads, where the acreage runs back down long private drives, the stumps are different. Chinese tallow has taken the wet fence lines and pasture edges throughout this stretch of Orange County, and a tallow stump that is only ground will usually put up shoots from its roots. Out there, on firmer ground in a dry spell, pulling with the roots is the better answer, and the drive and the culvert at the road get checked first so a loaded trailer can get in and back out.

We walk the stumps with you and sort them into two groups. Yard stumps near the house, the drive, the fence or a bed get ground. Tallow and anything standing where a pad or a pasture is planned gets pulled, provided the ground will take the excavator, and if it will not yet we say so and schedule for drier weather rather than rut the place. Before grinding, public lines are located through 811. Private lines, such as a sprinkler system, a well line or the feed to a shop, are not on the 811 map, so you show us where they run. The grinder takes each stump below the surface and follows the surface roots as far as you want them gone. What comes off is a heap of chips and soil, and in Vidor that heap needs a plan, because chips left in a hole on wet clay rot, sink and leave a soggy dip. Where you want lawn back, the chips come out, topsoil goes in, and the spot is finished a little high so it settles level instead of low. We deliver the topsoil ourselves, so no second company is involved. Many Vidor yards with a stump also have a low spot that holds water after every rain, often in the same corner. Filling and regrading those small standing-water spots is also work we do, and doing it while the stump is being dealt with saves a second trip and a second set of tracks across the lawn. Pulled stumps get their holes backfilled with suitable fill and compacted, and the root balls leave on the truck. Nothing is buried, and nothing goes into a ditch.