Windsor is a young town with a lot of old trees. It only became a town in 1992, but the valley oaks around it were here long before the subdivisions, and plenty of neighborhoods were built around them. Add the street trees from the building boom that followed and the backyard pines that have gotten too big for their lots, and stump work here never really slows down. In October 2019 the Kincade Fire pushed toward town and thousands of people evacuated. Firefighters held the line, and since then a lot of homeowners have taken out trees that sat too close to the house. Many of those stumps are still in the ground.
We grind stumps across Windsor, from the older streets near the Town Green to the newer neighborhoods climbing toward the eastern hills. Most jobs are a standard stump grinding visit. When roots from a removed tree are still buckling the lawn or the edge of the driveway, we take those down with surface root grinding. Call for a free estimate.
Stumps close to the house after fire thinning
Fire officials push homeowners to keep the first few feet around a house clear of anything that burns easily. A stump against the wall isn't much of a fire risk on its own, but the sprouts, leaf litter and bark mulch that collect around it can be, and a rotting stump also draws termites toward the foundation. We grind close-in stumps carefully, in short passes, and rake every chip away from the siding so you aren't left with a pile of fuel next to the house. We also watch what grows back: oaks and many ornamentals send up sprouts from a cut stump, and those sprouts are exactly the kind of fine fuel you were trying to get rid of. Wood chips make good mulch out in the yard, just not right against the walls. If you're turning that strip into gravel or pavers and want the roots gone as well, stump removal clears the whole root ball so nothing rots under the new surface.
Oaks, newer lots and the ground underneath
Windsor is the northern tip of the flat country that runs up from Santa Rosa, and many lots share its heavy clay. Older valley oaks were often left standing when neighborhoods went in, so when one finally comes down, the stump can be huge and ringed by sprinkler lines, fences and patios added over the years. We look at all of that first, mark what you want protected, and work from the side with the best access. Big oak stumps often have a hollow or rotted core, which goes faster than people expect, but the solid outer ring and the root flare still take time. Newer subdivisions have smaller trees and tighter side yards, where a compact grinder usually does the job in one short visit. Winter rain turns the clay soft, so on wet lawns we put down plywood paths for the machine. We work the whole town and north up the freeway to Healdsburg.
Common Questions
Right up to it, in most cases. We take the stump down in small passes near the wall and keep the wheel off the foundation, siding and any pipes coming out of the house. If the stump is touching the foundation or the roots have grown underneath, we'll stop and walk you through it before going further. The chips get raked well away from the house when we're done.
No. Fresh stumps grind fine, and many people book us the same week the tree comes down. Green wood is wetter and a bit stringier, but the wheel doesn't mind. The only reason to wait is the ground: right after heavy rain, a soggy lawn can rut under the machine, so in winter we sometimes push a job a few days for the yard's sake.