How to Use a Sod Cutter to Remove Old Grass
Call us at 281-431-7441. In this video, Houston Grass South Owner Michael Romine talks about how to use a sod cutter to remove old grass and weeds from your project area before you lay new sod.
Michael Romine knows grass. Michael’s family has been in the grass business since 1981, and he grew up mowing acres of grass on his family farm in Bay City, TX. That’s where the grass sod sold at Houston Grass South comes from and that’s why we know that it’s the best grass sod sold in the Houston area.
Here’s a summary of the video:
How to use a sod cutter that you rent from Home Depot or something like that: It is . . . they’re normally, I think, about $40 or $45 for a half-day and about $75 for a full day to rent those machines. You need to have some way to transport it. They’re extremely heavy. Usually those places that you rent it from will give you some type of ramp or something.
They are probably guessing 4′ tall at the handle. There again, at least a few hundred pounds. It’s a lot of metal and a big motor, and whatnot. You need to be in fairly good shape as well, to be able to do that, I would think.
Normally, we send 2-man crews to do that, run that machine, because if you’re just doing straight, dry areas, it’s relatively easy to operate. In doing the turning and you get in wet areas, sometimes it does take 2 men to maneuver the machine. Then it also takes another man or 2 to drag the grass that you just cut out of the way. Because if you don’t drag the grass that you just cut, the strip that you just cut and you come back to make another pass, it will bog the machine down. You have to get that grass away from there, normally.
There are settings on the machine for the depth, so you can adjust. There are a few different brands of this machine, but again, they all work about the same. You can decide how much dirt you want to take. We normally take as little as dirt as possible, mainly because you don’t want to pay for something that’s already there. You don’t want to take out perfectly good dirt that’s there. You are wasting dirt, you’re filling landfills, you’re doing more work than you needed to in creating excessive weight in your . .
. whether it be trash bags, wheelbarrows, or whatever. We try to take as little dirt as possible when we take it up.Pretty much, it’s just like mowing your yard 16″ at a time. You make a pass, you turn around, you come back, and like I say, you have to drag each row away every time, obviously, working around the flower beds and the concrete and whatnot. Turning is a little bit more; maneuvering it is difficult because it is bulky and a fairly heavy machine.
There is a lever on it, just like your mower. There’s one that you can just drive it around with, where it’s like a self-propelled mower; it pulls itself along. The other lever, normally, will start the blade working. You can run one independent of the other if you need to. That’s pretty much all there is to a sod cutter. It’s normally got just a Honda or some motor on top of it. You start it with a pull start. It just sounds like your lawn mower. Then when you engage the blade, it’s louder because there’s a lot of moving and vibrating going on underneath the machine.
Houston Grass South is located just a few miles east of Sienna Plantation and just off Highway 6 at FM 521. You can come by our office to pick up grass sod or we can deliver your sod to your project site. We can also provide a crew to use a sod cutter to remove your old grass and weeds. Call us at 281-431-7441 today!
