Stump grinding in Dallas

Texas law requires notice to 811 two business days, excluding weekends and holidays, before digging, and a stump grinder digs. When you hire a company, calling is the contractor's responsibility; ask for the ticket number before the machine arrives. The service is free.

811 marks lines owned by utilities. It doesn't mark private lines, and Dallas yards are full of them: sprinkler mains and valves, low-voltage landscape lighting, invisible pet fences, and gas or power lines run to a detached garage or pool equipment. Flag those yourself. Older central neighborhoods with alleys often have service lines running across the backyard toward the alley, right where many backyard trees grew.

Much of Dallas sits on clay that swells when wet and shrinks when dry, and slab foundations are common. Grinding a stump doesn't change how the soil around the slab behaves; the roots that stay in the ground decay slowly over years. What does matter is what you do afterward: leaving a deep, chip-filled hole beside a foundation lets water collect there, and wood chips settle as they rot.

Near a slab, ask for the grindings to be removed rather than packed back into the hole, and for the hole to be backfilled with soil and graded so water drains away from the house. If a big tree was removed because of foundation concerns, a foundation professional can advise on watering the soil near the slab through the next dry summer.

Some of the trees most often removed in Dallas don't give up when the trunk is cut. Callery (Bradford) pears, planted widely in newer subdivisions, send up sprouts from their roots. Chinaberry, an invasive species common in older yards and alleys, does the same. Hackberry seedlings also come up readily around old stumps, though those usually grow from seed rather than roots.

Grinding removes the stump, which ends sprouting from the stump itself, but root sprouts can still appear several feet away. Cut them at ground level as soon as they show; each cut draws down the roots' stored energy. A grinding company can also grind out the larger surface roots, which reduces the number of sprouts.

Dallas Sanitation collects brush and bulky trash monthly, up to 10 cubic yards per household, with one larger 20-cubic-yard pickup a year if you reserve it through 311 the week before. Brush has to be in pieces no more than 8 inches in diameter and 10 feet long, and set out Thursday through Sunday before your collection week. Piles over the limit are collected for a fee billed to the utility account.

That works for limbs from a removal. It doesn't work for the stump itself, trunk rounds, or a mound of grindings, so decide before the job whether the company hauls those, spreads the chips on site, or leaves rounds you'll cut down yourself.