When searching for a company to provide lawn aeration near me or lawn aeration services in Frisco, Plano, Allen, Dallas, The Colony, McKinney, Lewisville, Prosper, or Little Elm, what are the first questions you want to ask? Your main question will be related to this: how much does it cost to aerate a lawn? And while cost is important, it is not the most crucial question about lawn aeration. The most important question is related to the lawn aerator equipment. Why? A lawn core aerator is not a lawn mower. And it cannot go from house to house without being sterilized and not spread diseases.

Sterilizing Lawn Aerator Rental Home Depot & Lowes

Aerating a lawn with a Home Depot lawn aerator rental that has not been sterilized would be akin to your doctor using a needle and syringe to draw blood from you and then using the same needle on the next patient. Therefore, unless you want your turfgrass and lawn brown and infected with uncurable (only manageable) diseases like SADD (St. Augustine Decline Virus), TARR (Take all Root Rot & Take all Patch), or other curable fungus diseases like brown patch or fusarium wilt, then you are going to have to take precautions; further, you are going to have to prepare your lawn for aeration. Watch our YouTube video showing how we sterilize and clean core lawn aerators to prevent fungus lawn diseases and soil-borne disease spread.

Cost to Rent Aerator Home Depot and Lowes?

Here are some popular Google searches related to aerator rental: Home Depot Rent Aerator and the Cost to Rent Aerator at Home Depot and Lowes.

The cost to rent a core aerator at Home Depot and Lowes in the North Texas area is around $70 + tax for 4-hours. Important Note: an aerator is heavy and weighs 3-4 times what a lawn mower weighs, so you won't pick it up and load it in the back of your SUV. You will need a trailer to pull it or heavy ramps to load it into your truck. Then you will also need to bleach, sanitize it, and follow the steps of How to Prepare a Lawn for Aeration, as listed above.

How to Prepare Lawn for Aeration

Marking Lawn Sprinklers and Valves - put on your old flip-flops and swimsuit, turn on all your irrigation zones, and go out and mark all your sprinklers, valve boxes, and irrigation boxes with flags. Why? The yard core aerator will break any plastic the tines run over. And the lawn aeration service can't do this for you due to #2 below.
Lawn Watering before Aeration - In 70-80-degree weather, your lawn soil needs to be deeply watered 3-4 days before the aerification appointment. Deep watering would be for 20-25 minutes. In 90-100-degree weather, your lawn needs to be deeply watered for 24-48 hours (you notice this specifically says hours, not days). Note: this is a critical part of preparing for lawn aeration as it allows the aeration tines to work as designed. Drum-based lawn aerators won't pull cores to 2-3 inches if the ground is muddy or if the ground is dry.
Mixing a solution containing 50% bleach and 50% water, spray the aerator's drum and inside the tines. Note: do NOT do this on your lawn, as it will kill the grass; do it in the street or your driveway. Let it sit for a few minutes after spraying, then rinse the drums and tines with water.

Hire the Best Lawn Aeration Service near Plano, Frisco, Allen, Mckinney, Dallas, Prosper, and Lewisville, TX

What constitutes the best lawn aeration service? Since this is in a different realm than regular lawn care services, we think it requires the customer to ask intelligent questions:

Cleaning Aerators - How do you prevent disease spread when you aerate lawns? Do you power wash and bleach spray your aerator tines after you finish at each property?
Water Weight - if you have a drum aerator, do you fill your aerator roller with water so the tines have enough weight to dig down to the full 2-3 inches?
Soil Wetness - how many days before you come should I water, and for how long?
Aerator Tines - how often do you change your aerator tines? At least once per year?
Discounts - do you have any discounts if I subscribe to your lawn treatment service?

When is the Best Time to Aerate Your Lawn in Texas

Home Advisor Bob Vila and This Old House have great information about how to take care of your home and property in the USA; unfortunately, generalizations don't work with Mother Nature and the USDA plant zones hardiness map or cover other specialized regional information. If you want a refresher on the lawn and plant hardiness map, click here: USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map.

Asking the question of When is the Best Time to Aerate Your Lawn in Texas does not even work for all of Texas. Why? Because the far north end of the Texas panhandle is Zone 6 (and some people debate if not Zone 5B), and many people up there grow a different kind of cool-season grass in their lawns: Fescue, Kentucky Bluegrass, Perennial Ryegrass, etc. And in central and north Texas, we grow warm-season grass: Zoysia, St. Augustine, Bermuda, etc.

Best Time to Aerate Your Cool-Season Lawn in Texas - cool-season lawn grass in Zone 6 should be aerated 1-2 times yearly. Typically, it would be done in late September to early October while also re-seeding dead patches simultaneously. Then, people with very thatchy lawns coming out of the winter growing season will usually use the aerator again after the last freeze date, which in the north Panhandle would be late April. Note: you never aerate cool-season lawns in the middle of the summer. The grass is already under stress, and doing so can quickly kill big chunks of it.

Best time to Aerate Your Warm-Season Lawn in Texas - warm-season lawn grass in Zones 7-9 only needs aeration every two years unless you have disease issues or are in a high-traffic and high-compaction area. Why? Because warm season grass grows on runners with deeper roots. It is also more hardy than cool-season grass (except St. Augustine, which is more finicky and disease-prone). The best time to aerate warm-season grass is once it gets consistently warm; anytime from April to September works well. Can you do it in March? Yes. There is no danger to the grass; it just takes longer for the aeration holes to fill in because the ground is not warm enough for the warm-season grass to grow actively.

Important note: do not aerify your lawn after you put out pre-emergent. Why? Because pre-emergent forms an invisible barrier in the soil. Once you disturb it, you have wasted your preemergent herbicide, and weed seeds can start germinating again.

How Much Does Lawn Aeration Cost - Cost to Aerate Lawn

Per the great homeowner advisor website, Bob Vila, the average cost to aerate a lawn in 2022-2023 is $100-350, with a national average lawn aeration cost of $140. https://www.bobvila.com/articles/lawn-aeration-cost/. We also have a very short YouTube video explaining lawn aeration cost and why the cost is so much more than paying the lawn guy to mow your lawn.

This is based on residential homes, not commercial properties. Further, as indicated on their website, it formulates many variables: trip charges from each aeration service, variable rate of aeration per square foot, rural vs. city, reputation of the company, type of lawn aerator, etc. Note: they also astutely point out that to save money, "bundle aeration with other lawn services." Why? No matter what the home service is today, a vendor needs a certain amount of revenue to roll a truck to it. A reputable plumber in Plano, Frisco, Allen, Dallas, Lewisville, Mckinney, or Prosper is not rolling to your house for a one-time job of $70; those days are over. And it is not easy to get someone reputable to show up for less than $500 (whatever they are fixing).

We do not offer ad-hoc aerations, we only aerate properties who subscribe to our lawn treatment programs.

If you are ready to schedule your professional lawn consultation, please click here to learn more about the scope of the consulting services: Landscape Lawn Consultant near Central & North Texas.