Battery Scarifier (Dethatcher) Test on Kikuyu Lawn

so today finally testing out that battery scarifier that i got from mazport gonna go try it on matt's lawn today so let's grab it and let's go take it across the road [Music] so [Music] yo mate what up welcome to another lawn tip vid all right so we're finally doing videos at matt's house again this year if you guys didn't know matt has a kaiq lawn and we did a renovation series on his lawn probably about two years ago now um because last year we had drought so matt couldn't get any water on this lawn here but the reason i've taken so long to do a review on this alco um the scarifier is because we're waiting for his lawn to wake up and start growing so as you can see it's got some color it's got a lot of dead stuff in here which is good because we'll pull a lot of this out with the scarifier today but today i really want to put this thing through its paces um thanks to ben again down at central west mowers for organizing for me to get this to try out um again not a paid sponsorship so i'll tell you guys what i think about this battery powered thing um let's see how long the battery lasts as well i'm gonna try to get over this twice i'll be interested to see if it gets over the hallway twice only into the front today um this is basically the project we need to look after out the front so we're just gonna water it with this water tank if we still get a dry season we should be okay to keep this as part of our project though i'm gonna try a few different things on it get it nice and low use some pgr and again that's with this lawn which i'm keen for but let's get straight into it let's rip out some grass with this thing and and see how it goes all right so as i said this thing's battery powered this is a scarifier so it has got some scarifier blade underneath there as you can see so that'll rip into our basically a layer below the soil that is full of thatch gonna pull a bit of above ground patch as well yeah like this dead stuff here from winter this is normal too by the way with like you don't stress if you see brown patches in it after winter it'll green up pretty quickly once your temps get warm enough but we're gonna try to get the below ground thatch as well which means below the surface not below the leaf blade but below the soil surface um which is why scarifiers are great uh if you want to get the above ground stuff you get something like a groomer which has more tightly spaced blades together see this is how this is widely spaced like this just here that's why it's a scarifier so it should get down nice and deep um but yeah this is a battery powered unit so i'm gonna be interested to see how it goes i think it's like a 40 so that's the battery there was a beast 42 volts shove it in locks back into place so the brand and this is alco and you can get this from mass port from what i've been told um yeah so that's all i really know about to be honest um mass port i think they own elko now correct me if i'm wrong but i'm pretty sure that's why it works um so the mail shop in town just got it for me looks like we can adjust the height over here and that is done with there we go this little dial just here you can adjust it up and down with that let's do it let's start on three and see how much gets out on one pass and we'll go from there but let's just test it out i'm just going to try this bad boy [Music] so that was three passes that's he won i'm actually really impressed with that for a little longer one this thing would be perfect you see there's a lot of dead material in there a lot of grass blades as well which is good if we get down close to here you can't really see too much damage just pulled a bit out you see all that brown stuff disappeared though see we can just see dirt now that is ideal so if you went over this two or three times you'd pull a lot of that out and we're gonna go on setting three two we can still go deeper than that but yeah i i'm actually really impressed with that that's a lot better than i thought it was going to be so yeah all right let's sit down to five and let's see how much we pull out i'll empty the catcher and let's have a look all the way [Music] all right so i filled that catcher up pretty quick as soon as you feel the catcher up obviously it's not gonna collect anything else so that was what three passes whoa holy dooley we pulled some stuff out and that actually started to pull me along a little bit as well once we got to five so five is definitely the way to go look at that pulling out some old dead runners yes this lawn is gonna love this all right well let's get into it let's see how long this battery life [Music] [Music] all right so the battery has just run out so it lasted what 20 minutes it was pulling a lot out there i've got four four wheelie bins worth of stuff in here so i guess that's the downside you probably need a couple of batteries you'd have your lawn or you have to wait for it to charge and go from there so dang it really want to get over at least once with one battery um i might go get the swarming and get the little scarifier from that and use it on here but yeah really tell you what i'm really impressed with this thing i get i'll tell you what the only downside's probably gonna be the battery on it doesn't last that long but it is doing some heavy work and like this thing had a bit of fat in it too like four wheelie bins off this is only 100 square meter lawn we're about three quarters of the way there so what 75 square meters we've done yeah not cool i mean it is cool how much we got out but yeah crazy every pass i had to basically fill up now actually i'll show you look this area here where it was like real brown um we pulled most of that brown stuff out as you can see once we get a rocker rotary through here and scalp it it'll lift a lot of that up we won't scalp it today we'll just drop on the lower setting on my mole which doesn't quite scalp as low as brenton's one does from last week's vid just pulled all that dead stuff out of here which is ideal because it's now going to get some oxygen down lower going to get some water to go down lower as well it's going to get your nutrients down there as well so definitely a benefit to scarifier even if you don't pair it along with the renovation still fine to scarify especially kayak um and cooch is a i highly recommend you do it i'm actually going to do my rye at one point probably more towards autumn um with the swarming i might try soon who knows because it's quite there's a bit of dead stuff under the soil so see it goes so yeah impress this thing just needs more battery life um but it goes deep enough pulls enough out i'd say to this catcher next time if i was to use it i'd probably just go over with the catcher off and pick it up with the rotary mouse because it's just too much the catch is tiny so it's hard to go with it but yeah impressed here is the scarifying cartridge um for the swarming unit a little bit more solid a few more oh that's sharp as me and i'll tell you what yeah definitely more solid but i mean the price point is quite different as well and i think um but let's take this catcher off replace it and go finish off the job [Music] i tell you what every time i change out a head on these it just surprises me every time it's just ridiculous all right so that is cutting probably a little bit too deep yes we'll have to take it up a little bit we'll take it over test it out see it runs this i charged this battery last night and only cut the green with it this morning so it should should last a while [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh well that is all done now let me just show you man i'll tell you what i took the sawmill up a little bit higher and it's breezed to that so easily didn't stop at all heaps better and i still got tons out mostly brown stuff second time around as well which was impressive um it looks heaps better so i don't know how much you guys can tell but this whole area here all that dead stuff has pretty much been pulled out that was all brown dead satch in there before look at that there's still a bit in here a nice scalp will pull most of that out which we'll do get in a moment we'll get my bushrange tomorrow and just we're not going to cut it down like crazy um we're just going to clean up what's here basically and i'm going to fertilize but yeah i'm actually really impressed with the swarming as well both good units i mean the other one is a lot a lot cheaper it actually powers to a little bit more at a deeper setting the other one as well um but then i probably say this one does a slightly better job at actually pulling out the brown stuff in the end so impressed with both of them um if you because not everyone's gonna be able to get one of these units it's just the way it is i would highly recommend one of those alkos they're great i'm not sure if they're in stock with massport yet i heard they're coming out soon so keep an eye out for them i think you get them directly from your local mail shop or on their website or something like that but yeah really impressed with that this is going to be awesome for this season this lawn doing this now you can do this with kuching kayak anytime during the growing season if you want to it's really going to help it out thinly out and just stop it being so spongy and you know when you cut sometimes you get the yellow look across it great way to stop that happening just yeah it's good stop that dirty sponge [Music] [Music] now again this was the worst spot where all the dead stuff was look at this they're doing it now so the moles also sucks them up but that's scarifier well both those scar flies have done an awesome job it's important to do a double pass for those bad boys as well make sure you do just so you get as much as you can for mate this lawn is going to love it this season so let's get some food down and then wrap this video [Music] all done done and dusted so i'm going to keep you guys updated on this lawn show you guys basically how it progresses throughout this whole season we're going to be doing basically one of my programs to this place here now that we put some water down on it i'm going to try and squeeze it down nice and low with using some pgr obviously grooming every now and then um and just giving a test put only going to work on the front lawn just to save water we're not going to go with the back lawn as well unless we get some good rainfall which it looks like we might so who knows anyway thanks guys so much for watching really appreciate it had fun using those scarifiers today i'm stuffed now though as you can tell um yeah see the next one

Channel: Lawn Tips

Views: 86,706

Keywords: lawn tips, scarify lawn, scarifying a lawn, dethatching lawn, battery scarifier, battery dethatcher, masport scarifier, at-ko scarifier, ben sims lawn, lawn tips ben sims, lawn renovation, kikuyu lawn, kikuyu grass, how to dethatch a lawn, how to fix a lawn, lawn fix

Id: Y1PTw9wYbbc

Length: 11min 34sec (694 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 24 2020