Should a stump be ground down or pulled out?

The two options

What grinding leaves behind

A grinder chews the stump and its big surface roots down below the ground, typically 8 to 12 inches, and leaves a pile of chips in the hole. The roots underneath stay and rot over the years. As the chips and roots break down the spot can settle, so it may want topping up with soil before it's sodded, and again later.

Some trees common here, sweet gum especially, can send up shoots from the roots left behind.

When it has to come out whole

Anywhere you'll dig, pour or build: a pool, a slab, a footing, a driveway, or a trench for a drain. Roots rotting in place leave soft ground behind, and a grinder doesn't reach deep enough to clear a footing or a pool dig. With an excavator, the stump and root ball come out in one piece, and the hole is filled and packed so it doesn't sink later.

A whole lot of stumps

After a clearing, the stumps where something will be built get pulled, and the rest are ground or left depending on what that ground is for. It's one conversation about the plan for the lot, not a stump-by-stump one.

Before a stump is pulled

Pulling a stump is digging, so utilities get marked through SC811 first: roots and buried lines share the same ground. And if the tree is still standing and it's a protected size, the Town's tree permit comes before any of this.

What Josiah looks at on a visit

How many there are, how big, and what the ground is going to be used for next.