GVB1316 Electric 16” 13 Amp Dethatcher and Scarifier with 12 Gallon Collection Bag | 12 Gallon Collection Bag

This is a middle range consumer level product. Bad reviews either expected too much or were written by people who didn't read the manual. There is a lot of useful info included in the manual including the proper use of the machine and proper preparation before using it. You should definitely take the time to read it if you go for this Dethatcher/Scarifier. It should be suitable for most suburban lawns. Mine is 7500 SF and I did everything at least twice so 20,000SF wouldn't be a problem. I'll give my thorough review and add in some advice based on the mistakes I made. If you're like me then you haven't dethatched in a long while and you've noticed irrigating and fertilizing aren't giving the same results you expect. Thatch is a fibrous layer of plant material that builds over itself year after year. How much thatch you have depends on your soil biology and species of grass. Thatch should be broken down by microbes, worms, etc but excessive pesticide use or certain soils don't give an environment for them to thrive in so more thatch is put down each year than the biology can remove. Also certain species of grass produce significant thatch while others produce next to none. Thatch is not the dead or burnt out grass you can rake up. If you trowel out a square about 4" deep and look at it from the side, thatch will be a dark brown layer sitting right on top of the soil. It might be anywhere from nothing to 1" thick. Power raking is using a machine to rake for you. Power raking picks up a lot of dead leaves of grass and other debris to give more light and air to the soil. Dethatching is ripping up that top fibrous layer to expose the soil. This machine does both but cannot match the power of a gas powered dethatcher you might rent. For power raking purposes it's very well suited. For dethatching it will get it done with a little extra effort.This product should more be thought of as something you use to maintain your yard. It is designed around yearly or bi-yearly dethatching/power raking and not really designed to take the toughest of jobs with ease.That said, it can definitely be used to get a tough job done as it did for me. It will require more effort than you may be thinking it should however. The bag is small as many reviewers said, but after I got through the thickest thatch and was on my last pass the bag was actually perfectly sized. It is small enough so you don't overload it weight wise and easily detaches for emptying straight into a can or bag. For maintenance purposes I have no doubt the bag will be extremely useful. A few things you need to do/know first.1) Cut your lawn short to around 1-1/2" if you can do it. People complaining their healthy grass got ripped out didn't read the manual. It will scalp your lawn if the grass is too long. I'm on a hill and have uneven ground so I was probably around 2" and it ripped some up. I think even at shorter lengths you should expect some thinning but if you plan to overseed or have a spreading type species you want it thinned. 2) Understand that the height settings are not so you can dig deeper but so you can adjust the machine based on how much wear your tines or knives have. Get on the ground and look at where the tines extend down to. If they go digging into the dirt you will rip stuff out and wear them down way too fast. The dethatcher attachment works great on the highest setting right out of the box (transport mode) if you have a lot of material to clear out. The scarifier attachment should be set so the dig through the thatch layer and 1/8" into the soil to help open it up and aerate. Going deeper with either attachment will work but it will cause more damage to your existing lawn if that matters for your project.3) My first impression after opening the box was that it was going to be a cheap piece of garbage based on the feel. The plastic felt flimsy and it didn't seem to weigh enough. Gas engines are heavy, need heavy frames and wheels but this is very light. It's rugged enough and doesn't need to support a combustion engine. I'm glad I didn't return it based on first impressions.4) You need a quality extension cord. I used a 50' 14 AWG cord on a 15 amp circuit and I think I got as much power out of it as possible. They recommend a 12 AWG cord in the manual for cords 50' and up but the cord holder on the handle is too small for a 12 AWG which seems like a design flaw. I have a shorter 12 AWG cord I tried and I did not notice a difference in performance between that (25') and my 14 AWG (50'). The longer your cord the more voltage drop you have and that can drop performance but I think my 14 AWG was fine.5) The air intake vents to cool the motor are in a really poor spot right next to the height adjustment lever right over the wheels. The holes will get blocked up from material that you have to clear out often. As an electric motor it will burn out if it gets too hot. It was about 80 degrees out and I let it cool down every 30 minutes to be safe. You spend more time raking up anyway.6) The height settings are counterintuitive (to me anyway.) #1 is the tallest height while #3 is the shortest. 7) The cord will get in your way, but once you get the hang of it, it's not a big deal. Just make sure you start closest to the outlet and work your way out. The cord should always lay over the area you already worked so you don't run the risk of running it over.8) If you have sprinkler heads, tree roots, etc, mark them with flags or something else so you don't run over them.9) You have to keep moving. Slowing down or stopping with the machine running strips it bare.I started with the dethatching tines and the bag on but it filled too quickly. I took the bag off and stuck a piece of wood under the rear hatch which made it a little easier for the thatch to go out the back. I did the first pass on the transport height setting and it raked out many barrels of old material. I raked this up and then went again with it set a little lower and it still pulled out a lot. I raked that and then realized that the tines were not doing a great job of taking out my thatch layer. I switched out the dethatcher for the scarifier - super easy to do. The scarifier will kick back rocks so I took out the wood piece. It worked great on the thatch. It cut right through it to the soil in one shot. I played with the height to get it where I wanted it. The scarifier will chop up any little bumps or unevenness which is good but it destroys more of your lawn while doing that. At this stage I felt like I might've been ruining the lawn because it was looking pretty bare and weak. I overseeded so it was important to me that I actually expose the soil completely since you need soil contact to properly germinate. 3 weeks later and I can see good strong growth from my existing and the new stuff is coming in. Next spring I believe it will fill in and do great now that water and nutrients will actually hit the soil. I neglected the lawn for a while so it will take time to bounce back. But all I have to do is maintain it next year which should be easy.You can see how much wear I put on the tines and the scarifier. I did not call the company to find out how much replacements cost but I think I can get another couple seasons out of these and decide if I want to replace them then.This unit can definitely handle what you throw at it. I treated it gently in the beginning but not so much towards the end and it held up. It's tougher than it looks. A screw came out where the handles attach directly to the motor housing and I lost it somewhere. I just used a spare screw I had instead and it was fine.All in all, I would recommend this machine if you only need maintenance or if you can spare the extra days it will take to do the tougher jobs. The only drawbacks are that it could be a little more powerful and the tines and blades got more wear than I expected. For a middle range product it is good enough and for the price I got it ($95) it's a deal.

I have a half acre of some of the best moss growing yard on the planet. I have spent years breaking my back raking it by hand. I hate it. I saw this thing a couple of years ago and thought surely my hatred was worth throwing $125 at it as a Hail Mary.I love this thing. I bought the corded model, even though I hate things with a cord. It is light and easy to use. The bag is useless in my opinion so I just bungee the door up so the grass can pass through. It does such a great job I have had several strangers stop their cars while I was using it so they could take a picture and order their own. I’ve bought a lot of things off of Amazon and this thing is easily in the top ten. What used to take me two weeks of back breaking work now can be done in two relatively easy days of taking up all of the moss and dead grass it pulls up. Seriously people, it is some of the best money spent.

I would 100% buy this again. Worked great for me. I did not use the bagger. It did shutoff when it became clogged. I ended up clamping the door open to fix that. Threw on some safety goggles and finished my whole lawn in one shot. Vacuumed it up using my mower bag. It doesn’t feel well built but it sure does the job. I used the dethatcher blade. If it broke tomorrow I would still be happy with the purchase.

This dethacher has a many flaws and 1 that is almost catastrophic. It keeps shutting off due to heat and want start back up until you clean the filters in the front. I could only make 1 pass and have to blow the front grill out with my air compressor. Later as dethatching I notice blue smoke coming from the casing. I took off the casing to expose the motor for cleaning and saw a bunch of dead grass around the EXPOSED brush motor. I later turned the engine on and observed the electrical motor has a good spark to it as it is running . We are in a fire ban here and this could potentially be a hazardous situation. DO NOT BUY this model it is a flawed design. I will have to purchase another next season . Only used it 1 day and gave up. No to this item

Works well and would buy again. I had quite a bit of dethatching to do and this got the job done. The bag fills up quickly and doesn’t always collect very much so I ended up not using the bag and just mowing up the material after the fact. It was more efficient that way. Also need to be careful to avoid running over your power cord or this thing will eat it up quicker that you can react

Works okay… I’m pretty on top of my yard and decided to verticut before scalping and leveling. I guess with this one you get what you pay for, it would go into overload protect every 10 ft… have to wait 1 min for it to reset… the bag hardly fits anything and on top of that the back orange grass shield broke off in the first hour of use. It did get the job done though, slowly. So 3 stars it is.

Wow! What a difference this made for our yard! Easy and convenient. It too in the hard work out of our raking experience. Our years has never looked to healthy! Would be rider again.

Now I read the reviews before I bought it. After it was delivered in a package that wasn’t damaged. I unpacked it and assembled it with ease and put it right to work. Now I did use a bungee cord to hold the back of it open as I walked so nothing would clog up. I did this for two hours straight without anything heating up or shutting down. I did put it on the deepest setting. After three months the grass I did it in grew phenomenally well.Now like all my equipment as soon as I was done, scaring the grass or detaching, whichever one I was doing, I do clean my equipment up right after and put it away. It’s very light to use and easy to use and adjusting it up and down for depth is also very easy. Plus swapping out between scarifying and detaching is as simple as switching out a roller. Literally so easy anybody could do it.

excelente es un equipo para escarificar, tanto eliminar raiz o pasto seco, como quitar hierbas que solo contaminan tu pasto, yo la puse en el nivel mas alto par que me ventile el pasto y abonarlo y en cosa de dos semanas mi pasto con el riego y los nutrientes esta perfecto, sano y muy fuerte

C'est miraculeux pour le prix. Je le conseille à 150%

Travaille très bien, bon achat

Lasted about 60 minutes before the gears on the thatcher attachment wore out. Trying to reach customer service was an absolute joke. Hours and hours on the phone and never talk to anyone. They will not handle the warranty claim online. Returned it. For the price it is absolute garbage. I picked one up at Canadian Tire for 140 dollars and it is still working about 4 hours in.

Works very well with both the de-thatching and aerator attachments. The bag fills up quickly. But that is common with all these products. It attracted a lot of attention and questions from my neighbours. All were impressed. My lawn is the envy of the area. I have a large lot, and filled 11 bags of dead grass. To make the process quicker I used a piece of wire to hold up the rear flap; de-thatched and aerated; then used my cordless blower to make easy piles to pick up the dead grass. But if you don’t assemble the grass catcher you could use the wire structure to hold up the back flap. I recommend this product. Especially as it was a wider swath than most.