Aerating your lawn by hand takes a long time, and it can be a whole lot of work. It is probably something that most people are not up to doing. Rather than spending hours of backbreaking labor trying to get your aerator to go to the ground and keep your hand aerator from clogging every time that you use it, why not consider using a gas powered machine aerator.
A gas powered machine aerator is much faster. You can literally get the job that would’ve taken you six or seven hours done in less than 20 minutes when you use a lawn aerator. Also, when you’re using a machine aerator, it is easy to go over your lawn two or three times. The benefit of using a hand aerator is that you can buy one for about $25 and then use it whenever you want to. Using a hand aerator is a great way to get close to the edges, and to go over dry spots one extra time, but if your lawn is bigger than 2000 ft.², you are going to spend a lot of time trying to aerate it. It is much easier to aerate with a gas powered aerator. In addition, you can probably get deeper plugs when you go over the lawn with a machine aerator.
You will be glad that you rented the lawn aerator, when your back and shoulders don’t hurt for the next week after you have done aerating your lawn. In addition, it doesn’t cost that much to rent an aerator. Most of the time you can rent one for $35-$40 or you may be able to hire someone in your neighborhood to do the aerating for you for about $40. This seems to be the going rate that most people pay to have it done. If you have done it through a large company like Prograf sort through green, they could charge you $80 – $100 for the same service.