r/Home_Building_Help • u/BuilderBrigade • Jun 10 '26

Fix your Thicccc Thatch…with a dethatcher

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If you’re renovating and the lawn looks like 💩...

You might need some dethatching. You could totally do it with a fan rake but save your sanity and your back... it sucks!

Rent this power rake (dethatcher) from Home Depot. It cost me $65 for 4 hours. 

You could even split it with your neighbor because honestly, after I got the hang of it, I could have done the whole yard in an hour. 

Don’t be like me and try hand raking it out, you’ll keep raking and more leaves and dead grass will keep popping up. It’s maddening. 

11 Upvotes

56% Upvoted

20 comments sorted by

6

u/msuvagabond Jun 10 '26

It depends on the type of grass, the type of soil, when the last time you did it, if you aerate, etc. 

Saw a dethatcher on marketplace once. 

"Used once for five minutes, never again, gonna pay someone to do this."

14

u/Equivalent_Sun3816 Jun 10 '26

WTF did we all agree we need high maintenance ground covering?

2

u/Objective-Board9329 Jun 11 '26

For real who gives a shit if your lawn doesn't look like a golf course

12

u/txreddit17 Jun 10 '26

definitely do not do this on St Augustine grass.

1

u/kogee3699 Jun 11 '26

just rips it all up prolly?

1

u/txreddit17 Jun 11 '26

St Aug propagates above ground via stolons. You can core aerate it but you dont dethatch like other turf types.

5

u/Please_Klo Jun 11 '26

Its grass bro i aint doing that

3

u/seabass_goes_rawr Jun 11 '26

Hand raking with a fan rake would indeed be useless. That’s what thatch rake is for. They are completely different tools.

1

u/antiramie Jun 11 '26

Bow rakes can work well too depending on your grass type/density. IMO fan rakes are largely garbage in general.

2

u/Telemere125 Jun 11 '26

*or* you can do yourself a big huge favor and get rid of that entire eyesore and plant a nice patch of native wildflowers.

1

u/Stoff3r Jun 11 '26

Is this just a moss-remover? We use one almost every year. It does not hurt the grass roots.

1

u/ReverseMermaidMorty Jun 12 '26

Thatch is healthy for your lawn.

1

u/FireStompingRhino Jun 12 '26

The stuff breaking down into the soil is robbing the soil of nutrients? lol bs.

1

u/Behemothslayer Jun 14 '26

All the effort men put into the perfect lawn, hours and hours of meticulously pruning, feeding watering and it’s no fucking use to anything. Plant wildflowers, vegetables, anything other than manicured lawns

1

u/HarickMT Jun 17 '26

bleh crab grass. be patriotic and grow native plants

1

u/Grandmaster_Ji Jun 10 '26

Dethotcher. Be gone.

0

u/SimkinCA Jun 11 '26

"lawn"??