Customer Reviews

Yard Butler D-6C Core Lawn Aerator

5 star:		(32)
4 star:		(22)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

This aerator works as it's intended, and wetting the lawn half a day before coring does make it much easier. We have clay underneath the lawn, so the part that was dry was quite hard to core through. It's been a week and a half, and we can see some green grass coming out of the brown patches now. And in response to the person that mentioned it's hard to empty out the holes, you don't need to empty it, just keep pushing it into the ground. Each dig pushes out the dirt from the prior dig. After you're done, just stand up a stick on the ground and push through it to empty the hole, simple as that.

Having said all that, I did see a very similar corer/aerator at home depot for $20. Wish I had bought that one.

Also, a word of advice - stay away from the 4-prong aerator. It's hard enough to push through the 2-prong, I can't imagine the 4-prong working too well.

This aerator works great. It's a little time consuming but if you do a small area at a time, it's worth using. My only complaint is that when I received it, I used it that night - it worked great, and the following morning. Unfortunately, the handle snapped that morning. You have to be careful and not put too much pressure on the handle. Use your foot on the core base to drive the cores into the ground.

I had a section of lawn that was put in before I moved in. The section is like clay and must be tough for the grass to get water... It runs off into other parts of the lawn... Area was always dry and barely any grass. Used this to make plug holes in the area and like magic... It looks like the rest of the lawn now. No extra watering, no fertilizers... Just a couple of holes in the ground and a world of difference.

So I used it on the rest of my lawn. Now the whole thing looks like I fertilized it but I didn't. My neighbors are hammering me for what fertilizer I used.

This is a sturdy piece of equipment. It does the job quite well. I was skeptical about the quality, but was surprisingly pleased.

You do have to carry around a dowel or something to push out dirt if it gets stuck, because the thing about aeration is that you are trying to pull soil from down below and pull it out onto the top of the ground. You don't want to just jam it down as someone else said like a metal rod compacting the soil more around the hole. By pulling soil out, you allow oxygen and water to get down into the soil for the roots, but eventually this fills back up with organic matter and surrounding soil.

I have a 40 by 40 back yard and this was definitely not a job for the big rental machines. Even if I got a bunch of neighbors together, it wouldn't make renting a gas machine worthwhile. I finished the whole yard in less than an hour and it was good exercise. So, skip a workout and go finish your yard. You'll save yourself a bundle and not pollute the air. The beauty of this thing is that you can pull it out yearly and go over some trouble spots. And you don't have to do the whole yard.

Horizontal bar bent first time I used it. Straightened that then the spike bent. Straightened that then the spike cracked. Got 10 good holes out of it, but the materials are just too weak for this kind of tool.

The first day I got this it worked great. The next day, under the same conditions, the cores were not ejected. While it still made holes, without ejecting the core, it compacted the soil even more. I cleaned them out and even used WD40 as someone else suggested but that still didn't help. I tried contacting the manufacturer but they didn't not respond to email or phone call. I am returning this junk and purchasing a Step N'Tilt Aerator.

We were looking for an inexpensive aerator and based on another's person review, thought we would give it a try. It works great and our lawn is already looking better! Great customer service too!

I have the Hound Dog HDP3-8 Coring Aerator. I bought this unit to see if it worked better. It does not; at least not in my clay soil. I found it sometimes working well, other times not working at all. When it wasn't ejecting cores, I stopped and switched to the Hound Dog HDP3-8, and found that while the HDP3-8 wasn't perfect either, it ejected cores much more reliably than this product.

When you're done, you have to manually remove the plugs that remain in the coring tubes. I always found it much easier to remove the plugs from the Hound Dog HDP3-8 than from the Yard Butler D-6C. I'm not sure what the difference is--perhaps the shape of the tubes?

Again, I have clay soil. How these products perform probably depends greatly on the type of soil they're used in. So, my coring results may differ completely from others.

The gripped handles seem nice at first glance, but my hands aren't too happy with them. They gave me blisters, and continued to be uncomfortable even after I put gloves on. They grip so well that when my hands moved during use, they held the gloves in place, and my hand shifted within the gloves. The effect was almost as bad as not having gloves on. The smooth metal handle of the Hound Dog HDP3-8 allows gloves to glide over it easily.

I was quixotically hoping this item was powder coated, but it is not. The paint wears off within minutes of the first use.

http://www.amazon.com/Hound-Dog-Products-HDP3-8-Aerator/dp/B00023S156

I used this product for three minutes before one of the tubes bent. I was able to bend it back and use it for another minute before it bent again. The tubes aren't even welded around the entire tube, only on two sides, hence the bending and eventually breaking. i returned it the first day. I found the Fiskers Aerator online, ordered it, and it appears to me that it will last forever(it is built to last a lifetime). I whole-heartedly recommend the Fiskers brand aerator.

Huge disappointment. It sheared in half after only 10 minutes of use. It's made of steel, but in at least two parts: the shaft is joined to the fork with a light solder. So unless you apply perfectly even downward pressure, the joint isn't going to hold. By the way, this isn't the first core aerator I've used. I borrowed my neighbor's for two seasons of heavy-duty use and had no problems. Wish he hadn't moved.