I've got a stump that from redwood tree cut down last year that needs to go. It was 7'7" at about 2-3ft above the ground. I've dug around it with a mini excavator and cut most of it down to ground level with a chainsaw, leaving me standing on a pad of wood that's 9ft or so in diameter. How deep would I need this ground out if I wanted to pour a concrete pad over the area? I have no idea how deep these go.
Removing a 7ft stump
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You don't want any organics under your concrete pad, unless you are going to engineer the pad to span the void.
Redwoods have a habit of regenerating. You will need to get the entire stump ground down as far as possible and then excavate If you want a concrete pad there.
I was thinking it all had to come out, just not sure how deep a redwood stump goes. Any experience on this? Regarding how a redwood suckers, is this just from the stump or can the roots sucker as well? That's going to be a big job to dig out a 60ft radius of roots...
That's how redwoods reproduce. When the main tree dies new trees grow up out of the root system.
Ever seen pics of rotten giant redwood stumps with a ring of young trees around it?
Just a slab like for a patio? No footings, no foundation? A would do a normal 4" slap with rebar. on crush and sand. Rent a compactor. Grind the stump to 8" below Take the soil down lower back from the stump to accommodate crush rock & sand giving you 8" of concrete. Double layer on the rebar. Wire together.
Stump would be very deep.
Stump would be very deep.
We get stump holes appear up to 20 years after the stump has disappeared. And that’s on 20” diameter and up pines. I would dig it out with a large excavator and fill the hole with concrete. May not be worth it. 
Heres a pile we dug up with excavator.
Heres a pile we dug up with excavator.No stump burning allowed where I live. Considering an employee of the town fire district lives literally 10 feet away from the stump I might be asking for trouble to have a "warming fire" right on top of the stump. I think my best bet is to grind the stump as deep as I can possibly go and backfill. We'll see how deep I can get it ground out now that the weather is starting to get better.
I think a few sticks of dynamite will fix your problem....j/k
I was just showing how big a 30-40 year old pine can get. If you live there long enough, you will have a sink hole. Remove and fill for 100% no problem future.
Once you've done all you can, dig a few caissons around the perimeter and beef up your rebar over it and you should be fine.
yer gonna need to dig it all out, a few bits of roots won't hurt much, but anything bigger then a childs arm will eventually rot and create a void, or in the case of redwoods, simply grow back.
You may of realized a mini excavator taint up to it, not even remotely, get some big iron and break the stump up as you dig it out. a 6' stump is not light btw.
once you have it out, you can knock/shake most of the dirt out of the stump and regrade the massive hole to likely near level again, compact the soil, then cap with crushed compacted rock, and then pour concrete, any other short cuts will eventually end with cracked concrete and or shifted concrete probably both.
Formed and reinforced properly, concrete will span a 9 foot void just fine.
So far, I'm just using the mini ex to expose the roots and cut them with a chainsaw or recip saw. I'm not sure what size of excavator could rip out the 1ft and 2ft diameter roots I've got all around the stump but I'll probably have a hard time getting it in my back yard. The roots seem to all be within the top 2ft of soil. The pics are deceptive, the stump is 7ft7in across the top. Most of this is cut flush now. Good summer project and calorie burner.
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Taylor Ellis
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Honestly, I have done both trees and concrete... well, I've done everything, basically, lol. Get your concrete contractor involved. Some caissons and some structural steel may be cheaper than trying to eradicate that behemoth, and it can rot away all it wants.
jolj
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WOW! I never read this before.
Reproduction is abundant in all the National Parks. In the spring of 1935, more than 10,000 seedlings were counted near the Big Trees Lodge of the Mariposa Grove, where mineral soil had been exposed. The seedlings often grow in thick stands, and after a few years some of them are shaded out and die.
Coast Redwood—reproduction by seeds and stump sprouts.—Seeds of the Coast Redwood develop in small cones which are about one-fourth the size of the cones of Sierra Redwood. The cones mature at the end of the first year. From 50 to 60 small seeds develop in each cone. Dr. Jepson, in his Silva of California, gives an excellent description of the method of reproduction:
Reproduction [of the Coast Redwood] is by means of seeds and stump sprouts. While seeds are produced in enormous quantities seedlings are a great rarity in the Redwood Belt, the densely shaded forest and the ground litter of foliage, often one foot thick, offering most unfavorable conditions for germination. Moreover a large percentage, 60 to 75 per cent, of the seeds are not viable.
Coast Redwood—reproduction by seeds and stump sprouts.—Seeds of the Coast Redwood develop in small cones which are about one-fourth the size of the cones of Sierra Redwood. The cones mature at the end of the first year. From 50 to 60 small seeds develop in each cone. Dr. Jepson, in his Silva of California, gives an excellent description of the method of reproduction:
Reproduction [of the Coast Redwood] is by means of seeds and stump sprouts. While seeds are produced in enormous quantities seedlings are a great rarity in the Redwood Belt, the densely shaded forest and the ground litter of foliage, often one foot thick, offering most unfavorable conditions for germination. Moreover a large percentage, 60 to 75 per cent, of the seeds are not viable.
I would say if anything, his numbers are conservative. In a natural forest, if you look at any mature tree, looking backwards, he was in the top .00001% of making it... I remember seeing mature ponderosa pines growing out of cracks in rocks and wondering how many thousands of pine cones did it take to drop a seed right there, and have the perfect conditions for it to germinate, and then be nourished enough to actually grow into that beautiful tree... one in a thousand, a million? And yet it is there...
