Stump Grinding in Rolling Meadows, Goodlettsville

In Rolling Meadows nobody is sure who says go

Rolling Meadows is attached townhomes and small single-level houses built between 1985 and 1995, with a pool and a low-maintenance arrangement that is most of the appeal. The grass, the shrubs and generally the trees are the association's responsibility, not yours.

Which is fine right up until a Bradford pear splits over a parking bay and a stump sits there for eight months. The resident cannot authorize work on common ground. The board meets when it meets. The mowing contractor is not equipped for it and has no reason to push. So it just stays.

The other version is a stump three feet from a patio that technically sits on association turf but only one household ever looks at. That one gets solved by a homeowner paying for it themselves, which is allowed almost everywhere, and which we will still want a manager's email about before we start.

Getting authorization without a three-month wait

We quote the association directly when that is who is paying, and we write the quote so a board can act on it without another meeting: the stump, the location, the depth, what happens to the material, and a fixed price.

What slows these down is usually vagueness. A quote that says stump removal, price on inspection, sits in a folder. A quote that says a twenty inch pear at the north end of the Highland Heights Drive parking bay, ground twelve inches under grade, spoil hauled, seeded, at a stated number, gets voted on.

If you are a resident who has waited long enough, ask us for that version and forward it. It moves things far more often than another complaint does. And if you decide to pay for it yourself, we still want written confirmation from the manager, because we do not run equipment on common ground on a verbal from someone who does not own it.

Grinding between parked cars on a shared drive

These runs were built with narrow shared drives and no turnaround at the end, which is the single biggest constraint on the job. A truck and trailer cannot go in and back out of some of them, so we stage at the entrance off Rolling Meadows Drive and walk the machine down.

Parking is the rest of it. Between about eight in the morning and four in the afternoon most bays are clear and the work goes smoothly. In the evening there is nowhere to stand a machine, let alone a trailer. Where the association can flag two spaces for a morning, we get in and out in half the time.

We also keep a shield up on the vehicle side of every grind here. Bays are close and a thrown chip against a windshield is not a conversation anybody wants to have.

Pine screens, pear stumps, and what we can reach

The planting between the townhome runs is white pine, put in as an eighties privacy screen, along with Bradford pear and flowering crabapple in the open areas and silver maple where there was room for it.

The pine screens are the awkward ones. They sit in a narrow strip between buildings with a utility easement running the length of it, and a locate ticket on those is non-negotiable because the electric and communications drops for the whole run are frequently in that strip.

The pears and crabapples in the lawn areas are simple by comparison, and they are what most of these calls are about. A crabapple stump is small, fast and cheap, particularly if there are several to do the same morning. On a property with two dozen units, a single visit taking care of five or six accumulated stumps is by far the best value the association will get, and we are glad to price it that way.