I have to say that this gizmo is actually a pretty good buy.

See pics below of what a first pass looks like. It will take several hours of work to do your whole lawn but if you only do it once a year then I think it's worth your time.

What I did first was mow one section of lawn at a time. I did this to prevent overheating the electric-powered dethatcher when working it through the section of lawn that I was currently working on. After that I ran the dethatcher in one direction for a first pass followed by a second pass perpendicular from the first pass (criss-cross pattern). In between the two passes I used the mower to vacuum and bag the thatch.

It took me about a total of 12 hours over two days to de-thatch, mow, and bag 10,000 square feet of lawn. Yeah, it's not something you can do in a very short amount of time, unless your thatch isn't that bad but mine was pretty bad. I ended up with about 20 lawn bags at the curb compared to the 4-5 bags I put out weekly this time of year.

The only thing I would have done differently would have been to do it earlier in the spring (it was on back-order until July but all of the sudden it appeared on my doorstep early last week). Because I dethatched on two very warm sunny days I think I may have stressed my lawn a bit too much. Fortunately we're looking at a cooler rainy week here in the Northeast so maybe my lawn will bounce back. Will report back next week with a followup.

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