Root Removal in Hartsville, Tennessee
Grinding takes the collar. Whether the runners going out from it need to come out too depends on what they are under, what species they belong to, and whether the tree above them is still alive.
Out Here the Root in the Way Is Usually in the Way of Something Going In
Most root removal calls in this county come from a project, not from a nuisance. Somebody is putting a hundred and fifty feet of new woven wire down a line where a hedge row used to stand, and every third post hole is hitting wood. Somebody is setting piers for a pole barn. Somebody is opening a garden plot where a walnut stood, or pouring a small pad for a stock tank, or digging out a spring box that has silted up.
Those jobs need wood physically gone from a defined footprint, which is a different task from grinding a stump. It is priced by the number of cuts and the feet of run, not by diameter.
The complication particular to the old homeplaces around Willard and the north end is that a root plate a century old has grown around hand-laid limestone — dry-stacked footings, a collapsed cistern lid, rock somebody piled against a tree line in 1910. We probe before anything mechanical goes in, because a wheel finding a stacked rock wall is a bad afternoon.
Black Locust and Hedge Will Answer a Cut Root by Sprouting
This matters more here than it would two counties west, because the species that dominate old Trousdale fence lines are exactly the ones that sucker. Black locust is the worst of them: sever a lateral and it will throw shoots along the whole length of that root, sometimes thirty feet out from where the tree stood, and you will be mowing a thicket for three years. Osage orange does the same thing at a slower pace. Hackberry will send up a few and give up.
Eastern red cedar does not sprout from a cut root or a cut stump at all. White oak and shagbark hickory essentially do not either. Black walnut is in between and usually quits after one season.
So the honest advice splits by species. On oak, hickory and cedar, grind the collar and leave the runners in the ground to rot. On locust and hedge, either chase the laterals out past where they are going to bother you, or plan on cutting sprouts.
Buried Pipe Is the Reason Root Work Costs More Than Stump Work
A stump sits in one place and you can look at it. A lateral root goes wherever it wants, and on a place with a tank and a field it goes toward the field, because that is where the water is. Roots find perforated pipe through the joints, not through the wall, and once they are in they behave like a plug.
Taking the tree out does not clear a lateral that is already occupied — that is a plumber's job with a cutter head. What root removal does is stop the next one. If the field is more than twenty feet from the trunk you probably have nothing to worry about. If it is closer than that, the section of runner between the two comes out.
We hand-dig the last foot on any root within reach of a line, every time. A wheel does not know the difference between a two-inch root and a two-inch poly water line running to a stock tank.
Roots We Will Not Cut
If the tree is staying, there are limits and we hold them regardless of what the customer wants. Nothing structural comes out inside a radius of roughly five times the trunk diameter, so a twenty-inch oak is protected for about eight feet all round. Beyond that, one or two runners can go in a season without much argument, and a fraction of the supporting roots is the ceiling for any single visit.
We do not cut on the uphill side of a leaning tree, which rules out a fair number of requests on the hollow slopes south of town. We do not cut roots on a tree that has already lost crown to a storm, because it is living on what is left.
When the answer is no, it comes with the reason. Most of the time the reason is that a fence line or a garden edge moves six feet for nothing, and a mature tree does not.
Root jobs we get called for around Trousdale County
- Runners humping a gravel lane between the road and the house
- A lateral lifting the corner of a barn pad or a slab feed room
- Root wood in the way of a new fence line, post by post
- Locust and hedge sprouts coming up along a severed root
- Roots crowding a septic lateral or an old spring box
- Surface roots on a mowed yard where the mower deck keeps catching
- Root plate wood left behind after somebody pulled a stump with a chain
Common Questions
How much root actually has to come out for a post hole?
Enough that the auger turns and the post sits plumb on undisturbed ground, which usually means the width of the hole plus a couple of inches. We cut the root square on both faces with a saw rather than tearing it with the auger, because a torn root end rots up into the plate. If three or four holes in a row are hitting the same runner, it is quicker and cheaper to take that whole section of root out in one go.
The tree is still standing and I need one root out for a fence post. Will that kill it?
One root, cut cleanly, past about five trunk diameters from the base, generally will not. The tree loses a share of its water uptake and grows a little slower for a season. What kills trees is a trencher running an arc through the plate, taking eight or ten roots on one side. If the post can shift eighteen inches to miss the root, shift the post. It is free.
Roots are getting into my field lines. Does taking the tree out fix it?
It stops new root going in; it does not clear what is already there. Have the line cut out mechanically first, then deal with the tree, then decide whether to remove the runner between the two. Doing it in the other order means paying to clear a line that gets reoccupied while the stump is still alive. Willow, silver maple and hackberry are the usual offenders on this side of the river.
Can you get roots out from under an old dry-stacked rock wall without it coming down?
Sometimes, working from the low side and taking the root out in short lengths rather than pulling it. Often not. A hand-laid limestone wall has no mortar holding it and the root it grew around is frequently the only thing keeping a course in place. What we will do first is dig one small inspection hole and look, and then tell you honestly whether the wall survives it. Rebuilding dry stone is a trade of its own.