After the wind felled my beautiful river birch I attempted to replace it with three dogwoods. Trying to dig the holes is problematic. There are incredibly thick roots everywhere. A neighbor says that when professionals, rather than the wind, fell trees they do something to remove the roots. I can’t imagine what. She did not know. Is there an easy why to remove or kill the roots that remain. The stump is about 24 inches in diameter, I have not yet had it removed or ground down. Is there an easy way to do that? I imagine not but thought I would ask.
The easy way is they grind them out.
The hard way is somebody digs, chops and pulls the stump.
The longer way is to accelerate stump death and breakdown with stump remover. You then burn the stump out.
You can rent stump grinders, but the rental machines tend to be relatively low powered, and they don’t go very far below the surface, if at all. I doubt a rented grinder could handle your 24-inch stump. And from what I’ve read, renting a grinder costs as much or more than hiring someone else to do it for you.
I’d just call a service. Grinding one stump shouldn’t take long, so you shouldn’t be looking at too much of a hit to the pocketbook. Probably between $75 and $150. Get some estimates.
Shopping around can bring the cost down considerably. We just had two large trees taken out and their stumps ground. In addition they also did stump grinding on 9 stumps from trees I had taken down.
We had many estimates. Companies with bucket trucks and nice equipment/stationery gave an estimate of $700 for the largest tree alone. A smaller company with no bucket truck (a guy climbed up into the tree with his chainsaw) and no stationery (likely no insurance also) ended up getting the job. They charged $800 total for the entire job as long as I didn’t mind paying cash. I didn’t mind!!