How to save money on stump removal

Stump removal is a great way to add a little usable space to your yard. Today, we want to share with you a few ways you can save money on your stump removal:

Stump removal is a great way to add a little usable space to your yard. Today, we want to share with you a few ways you can save money on your stump removal:
1. Choose stump grinding over excavating.
2. Get multiple stumps done at once
3. Get your stumps removed when you get your trees removed
4. Coordinate with your neighbors
5. Get rid of the waste yourself
The first thing to understand is that stump grinding is by far the more economical choice, and it leads to better results in almost all situations. Excavating a stump will leave you with a gaping hole in your yard and a huge mess. We explained it in depth in this post.
The next thing to understand is that there is a significant cost to transporting our stump grinding machine and sending out an operator to a stump grinding job. Let’s call this a “mobilization” cost.
So if you have two stumps shredded on two separate occasions, you’re paying the mobilization cost twice. You’re better off getting any and all stumps removed at one time. It’s all a matter of timing. If you foresee yourself needing another stump ground at some point in the future, it might make economical sense to wait.
Say, for instance, you have a large deciduous tree growing in your yard that could become dangerous or simply be an obstruction as it gets bigger. You know that you’ll need to remove it soon, and you know it’s going to leave a stump behind.
So maybe now is the time to get that tree removed, so you can get all your stumps done at once. Or maybe you hold off until next spring on grinding your other stumps, and get all the work done at once.
The fact is, if we’re already on site to do some work, it costs less to add on work than to call us out again a second time.
Another way you might be able to lower the cost is to coordinate with your neighbors. If they, too, have stumps they need removed, you can lump them all together into one big project. That way, the costs of mobilizing can be split up between all the homeowners involved.
Keep in mind that different stumps have a different removal cost; the only thing you want to share with your neighbors is the mobilization costs, not the overall cost.
Finally, there’s the leftover waste to deal with. What you’ll end up with at the end of a stump grinding job is shreds of wood, similar to wood chips. Some owners have small yards and can’t put them to practical use, so they ask us to haul them. There’s a cost to this, too.
There are several practical uses for your stump grinding waste, such as mulching. Or, if you have a little extra space, you can just spread them out and let them decompose (expect 3 months or longer for them to break down). We shared a few practical uses and disposal options in this article.
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When you're ready to pull the trigger on your stump grinding job, Snohomish Tree will be here to give you an estimate. To get started, you can fill out an estimate form here.