Greenworks 13 Amp 14-Inch Corded Dethatcher / Scarifier, DT13B00

This inexpensive, dethatching machine is amazing. I’m so glad I bought it. It is very lightweight and easy to use; it pulls itself along. The amount of thatch that flows out the back amazing. It left a layer of loose thatch material about 2-3 inches think. I filled TWENTY 42-gallon bags with thatch. My lawn area is about ½ acre, likely a bit less.A few things I learned.-- Cut the grass a little lower than usual. This makes it easier to keep the machine moving through your lawn.-- Dethatch when there is some moisture in the ground—not real wet, not dry. I did it after a good rain. I don’t think the dethatcher could do a good job if the ground was dry and hard.-- It seemed a good idea to heed the manufacturer’s recommendation to use an extension cord of the proper wire gauge depending on length. (The manual says you can burn up the motor if the extension cord is not of sufficient wire gauge for the lengthy. I paid about $40 for 100 foot cord. I didn’t want to use more than one extension cord so the cords would not pull apart. The hook on the handle for looping the cord to keep it from disconnecting works perfectly. (I once used some hedge trimmers that were a constant headache because the plug would pull out repeatedly.) I thought the extension cord would make the job pretty difficult, but it really didn’t. You just learn to work in patterns that keep the cord out of the way.-- The bag is useless because it fills up in just a few minutes. My advice: Remove it.This machine had enough power that it never got bogged down. But in areas where the grass was a bit high, it was harder to keep it moving through the grass. (Otherwise, it was very easy.)It was easy to switch the dethatcher blade and scarifying blade. I scarified to rough up the ground for reseeding.Before I bought the Greenworks dethatcher, I tried dethatching with a hand rake. Even though it was a well-designed dethatching rake, I soon realized that if I did the whole yard it would take a very long time and leave my old back aching probably for years. So I bought the Greenworks dethatcher. The price was very reasonable. I doubt I could have rented a dethatcher for less.No negatives. (There is a battery version of this dethatcher, but it costs about three times as much.)

Easy to put together and use. Works incredibly well, results similar to expensive rental machines. Very lightweight makes it easy to maneuver and it seems robust but it will probably feel cheaper than your lawnmower and might not last as long. That being said, I still think it’s punching above its weight. Great value.

It is cheaply made. But for what it’s digging out of my yard is simply amazing. I did half of my yard before it started raining and got 12 bags of dead debris from out of my yard.For an electric plug in device it is simply amazing. And I would tell my friends, family and neighbors to get one of these.The two different blade types that it comes with give you a choice of what to use on your lawn.The bag is really small and doesn’t hold even a single pass for my yard size. But would be fine for smaller yards. Be careful if you have in ground sprinklers. The scarification blade will break them if they hit them. So make sure to mark the sprinkler head before you use it.Overall a great machine that is easy to use.Has more than enough power for the job.

This device worked great. It came with the scarifier in place, which I used (I did not try the included thatcher adapter). Assembly was not at all challenging, with fairly good illustrations. Height adjustment is simple. I cut the grass low (second lowest setting on my Greenworks 80V mower), then set the scarifier unit to the second lowest setting, and it worked beautifully. My intention was to put slits in the lawn before seeding. Reading reinforced my intuition that soil contact is paramount in fostering seed germination and growth. I believe that to be true, because I'm pretty sure I heard the grass seeds parachuting from my spreader whooping and hollering and high-fiving each other when they hit the scarified ground (LOL). The unit left tidy slits without destroying the lawn. One caveat is that the ground should be dry. On very dry lawn the unit kicked up some dust, but not a lot. On the other hand, I had some areas where drainage is suboptimal and the soil was damp, and the unit had a tendency to "grab" and pull/jerk me and tear up the lawn somewhat. This can be completely avoided by limiting use to dry turf. The unit (again, this is with the scarifier adapter) pulled a lot of thatch out of the lawn, and removing the thatch was ninety percent of the job. The unit itself is very light, tends to pull itself along, and is remarkably easy to use as long as you avoid moist grass, where it misbehaves as described above. I elected to suck up the thatch with my Greenworks mower, which was quite labor intensive, requiring two or three passes (a higher-RPM gasoline mower might be more effective). A leaf rake would undoubtedly be effective, though I'm not sure the lawn would have the neat crisp appearance that mowing provides. Since I ended up mowing the lawn to pick up the thatch, I thought I might skip a step and tried using the scarifier on uncut grass. This worked pretty well, but the end result was that the grass looked a little scruffy compared with the lawn that was pre-cut and later mowed after scarifying. One of the best things about this whole process is that the lawn looked quite good after the process, which I appreciated. A lot of lawns appear torn up for weeks after aerating, and I was happy that I was able to avoid that scenario. My last comment is battery life. I had to charge the battery three times to scarify my lawn (half acre lot, of which about half is lawn), However, I am reluctant to comment here because the 4 Ah battery I have from my other tools is probably going on ten years old, and very likely has reduced output at this point. Overall, this is a definite 5-star purchase for performance and ease of use.

Great little tool. Spend an hour dethatching vs all day raking. To rent a power rake or dethatcher in my area is $50/4hrs $75/day and they don't come with a bag leaving you rake it up. Considering cost of rent and time saved renting/returning/raking this thing paid for itself in 1 use. Exceeded my expectation to how well it would work. Only downfall is the bag is kind of small, needs emptied often. Because there is no force pushing the thatch into the bag like wind of a lawn mower blade it builds up in the front of the bag and leaves a lot of thatch not picked up. No problem. I left it and went over the lawn again on setting 1 more quickly and that picked it up.