Two machines answer to power rake. One is a hydraulic soil conditioning attachment for a skid steer, roughly $150 to $250 a day on top of the carrier, used to grade and prepare bare ground for seed or sod. The other is a walk behind unit at $60 to $110 a day that pulls dead thatch out of a lawn that already exists.
The attachment: a drum of carbide teeth
The skid steer version is a powered drum that turns against travel, breaking up crust, pulverising clods and windrowing rock and roots to one side. The head angles left and right so debris can be walked off the area in passes. On a rough graded lot it does in an hour what a crew with hand rakes does in a day.
Hydraulic flow is the compatibility check
These heads run off the carrier auxiliary circuit and come in standard flow and high flow versions. A high flow head on a standard flow machine turns slowly and stalls in anything heavy. Hire the attachment and the skid steer from the same yard and say so, or confirm the flow rating of both before either one is loaded.
The walk behind machine is a lawn tool
Spring tines or flails on a small engine, pushed across turf to lift the matted dead layer. It renovates a lawn that is already there; it will not level a rough lot or move rock. If the ground is bare soil awaiting seed, this is the wrong end of the counter and the attachment is what the job wants.
What a day of rough grading actually costs
Price the pair, not the head. A skid steer and a power rake together commonly land between $400 and $650 a day plus delivery each way for the carrier. A quarter acre lot with the soil already stripped and rough graded is typically one day. A lot still carrying construction debris will take two.
Questions people ask about power rake rental
Will a power rake take rocks out of a yard?
It brings them to the surface and pushes them into a windrow at the end of each pass, which you then pick up or load out. It does not screen the soil, so stones smaller than roughly an inch stay in. On stony ground plan two or three passes with the head angled the same way.
Do I need a skid steer to hire the attachment?
You need a carrier with an auxiliary hydraulic circuit and a standard quick attach plate, which means a skid steer, a compact track loader or some compact tractors with a skid steer adapter. Yards keep the heads to fit their own fleet, so hiring both together is the arrangement that reliably works.
Power rake or box blade for a new lawn?
A box blade moves and levels bulk soil. A power rake finishes it, breaking the surface into a seed bed and clearing debris. On a lot that needs both, the box blade goes first and the rake goes last, and many jobs only need the rake because the grading was done by the excavator.