If your lawnmower grass catcher keeps clogging, there are several things that may be causing it - and all can be solved without a service visit!
If your grass catcher chute clogs with grass trimmings, you don’t have to just live with it. Several things may be causing this, but all can be addressed without a service call - you can JUST DO IT YOURSELF!
Your lawnmower’s grass clipping bagging system is somewhat a vacuum - sucking up grass clippings as they are cut from the lawn, and carried via a high-velocity stream of air, where they are deposited in a mesh collection bag. The mesh is necessary to allow air to move through the bag(s) where the clippings are captured and the air is expelled.
The source of the airflow is the mower’s blades themselves. As they spin inside of the mower deck, air is drawn in from the edges and expelled out the chute to the bags. The principle is the same for both walk-behind and riding lawnmowers. As the grass is cut, the clippings become part of the airstream that is moving from under the deck to the collection bags.
All pretty simple, right? So what goes wrong to cause the clippings to clog the chute? As it turns out, there is a whole list of possible culprits, including:
The throttle is not being run at high. Mowers are designed both at the engine and component level to be run at high throttle. You need enough air/vacuum is formed to move the clippings rapidly up the collection system. If not, clogs are likely. The grass is too wet or highly saturated. Drier grass mows better and doesn’t tend to clump. So, if possible, wait to mow, perhaps late in the day before sundown. The speed mowing is happening is too high. This is different than the throttle being set at high. If you move through the area being mowed too quickly, especially for areas with high growth, you risk clogs in the collection system, simply because too much material is introduced into the system at one time. The cutting height on the mower is set too low for current conditions. A good rule of thumb is not to remove more than a third of the length of the blades of grass. When deep cuts are taken, it’s hard on your lawn and tough on your mower and collection system tool. Dull or damaged blades. Grass that is not sheared off cleanly will not move into the collection system quickly and smoothly. Sharpen the blades, or if there is significant damage, replace them. The underside of the deck needs to be cleaned. If the deck has significant deposits of grass fibers adhering to it, this greatly affects air/vacuum flow, as well as gives plenty of places for grass to catch on and slow down its exit into the chute. Many lawnmowers have hose connections that water can be injected under the desk as the blades are engaged to assist in cleaning. The inside of the chute system has grass residue adhering to it or has a significant amount of deep scratches and grooves (likely from small branches, rocks, debris) that “snag” grass as it is moving in the chute. The inside of the chute can be soaked in soapy water and scrubbed out, and even sanded with a coarse grit sanding sponge to smooth it out. Follow up with an application of silicone spray, or something similar. Repeat from time to time. The wrong type of blades on your mower. There are two families of blades - mulching and high-lift. Mulching blades are primarily for chopping the grass finely and for depositing back onto the lawn. High lift blades are configured to create a significant amount more airflow than mulching types and are used for lawnmowers outfitted with bagging systems. It is possible to successfully use mulching blades for collection systems if all the factors mentioned earlier are addressed properly. However, if all other areas have been addressed, and clogging still occurs, then it’s time to make the investment in high lift blades.
There you have it - how to overcome the problem of your mower’s grass chute clogging! One last thing. Always make use of the grass clippings you collect. They are a great source of nitrogen and organic material for other parts of your yardscape. Don’t throw them away - you are literally throwing away the fertilizers and water you’ve applied on the lawn. Instead, use them for things like poultry bedding/feed, mulch in your flower and veggie beds, and for composting.
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Hey, Dirt Farmer Jay here from DirtFarmerJay.com.
Are you sick to death of your grass catcher clogging up with grass clippings?
Well, the fix is a lot easier than you may think,
and it doesn't require a service call. Stay tuned.
Hey, Dirt Farmer Jay here from DirtFarmerJay.com.
Before we get into all the reasons of why your grass catcher
may not be working properly and getting clogged all the time,
it's important to understand how the grass catcher system works.
Now, it doesn't matter whether you have one of these riding lawnmowers
or a push behind lawnmower, the basic principles are the same.
As the blades rotate under the cutting deck, they create a vortex of air.
And as the grass clippings are severed or the grass blades are
severed from the deck of the lawn,
they are now sucked into the airstream that is created and expelled out
into the chute.
The chute is porous and allows air to pass through.
So what happens is those grass clippings just get carried along.
Air sucked in under the deck and expelled out the chute.
Pretty simple, right?
So what goes wrong along the way?
Well, there's several reasons that you could have a problem.
First of all, one thing to consider, are you running the mower at full throttle?
Now, I've seen a lot of people do this.
They think they're saving on gas.
It's hard on the gas mower or on the engine to run it at full blast.
Don't do that.
You need to run it all the way.
It's designed to do that both because of the air cooling system,
but also the speed at which the tips of the cutters need to be running.
And if you run it at half or three quarter or seven, eight speed or whatever,
you're going to cause a problem with the speed at which the grass is cut
and the speed that's ejected.
The second thing is you may be cutting the grass when it's too wet.
If there's lots of dew on it, you've just had a recent rain.
It's really early in the morning.
It's really soggy.
Or you see that when you're riding along, you're getting tire imprints
in your your grass or in the actual soil substrate.
It's too wet.
And when it's that wet, it's going to be clumpy as it comes off,
therefore leading to larger clumps.
And you're getting up with probably a clogged system.
So don't mow when it's too wet.
Generally wait until it's later in the day and a little bit drier.
Number three, you may be mowing too fast.
Now, I just said you're supposed to set the throttle at full.
Right. But doesn't that sound like a contradiction?
No, I said the engine speed needs to be set at full.
But that doesn't necessarily mean you need to run around the yard at full speed.
Back it off a little bit to give the mower time to do its work,
especially if it's been a little while since you've cut.
The next one may be that you are actually mowing too much.
You shouldn't cut off more than about a third of blade length
than anyone cutting.
And if you need to do more than that, you maybe need to cut a part of it
or the hold on at one setting and then lower to the next.
But every time you cut that deep, it's hard on the grass.
It's hard on the mower.
So don't cut too much at one time.
And if you are having to cut a lot, slow it down.
Make sure it's dry.
Make sure the throttle is at full speed for the engine speed.
Number five, the blades themselves may be dull or damaged or distorted.
If they're dull, they're not severing the grass blades cleanly.
As a matter of fact, what they're doing is it's kind of pulverizing them
or fraying them, and that stops the exit of those grass blades cleanly.
And at the speed they need to exit to get all the way to the chute.
So make sure the blade is not damaged and it's sharp.
If it is damaged, get rid of it.
Put the right ones on it. Take care of the equipment.
The next thing that can be happening, number six,
is the underside of the deck itself
could be caked with all sorts of grass residue.
And when this happens, you're actually changing the vortex pattern
underneath or how fast or how cleanly air and the grass
clippings themselves move to the exit to move to the bagging area.
So when that happens, you've got to clean the underside.
If it's a walk behind, it's pretty easy.
You can tilt it up, take a high pressure hose, a putty knife,
knock that stuff all off.
But if it's a riding lawnmower like this one back here,
then there is a system here that you can see where you attach a hose to it.
Turn the water on high.
Run the mower with the blades going full blast.
And what will happen is that water is distributed underneath
and the blades distribute and kind of beat it up
on the side until the flakes drop off.
You clean the underside of the deck so that you clean the airflow up as well.
Number seven.
The inside of the chute system, in our case, on that riding lawnmower
is a hard plastic supposed to be smooth.
But when we opened it up inside, it was full of grass residue.
It was very rough, and therefore it was going to slow down a lot of snags
and you'd build a clog very quickly.
So what we did is we took those two components of the chute system,
submerged it in a large tub with soapy water.
I just use regular dishwashing detergent.
Let it soak for a couple of days.
And you can see I actually, because of the size of the tub
and the amount of water, I threw in a couple of my woodworking bar clamps
just to keep the tub intact and let it soak for a couple of days
and then took a utility scrub brush and brushed out the inside of those
until they were clean and then to make them real slick.
There's two other things that we did.
One is to take a sanding block, sand the inside and smooth it out.
And then secondly, is to take some lubricant.
In this case, I used a silicone lubricant
and dusted the whole inside of those, reassembled the system and fired up.
You know what? No problems whatsoever.
Flawless. It's now sucking them on right up.
And we're getting bags of our grass clippings
just cleanly and beautifully. So that worked well for us.
Number eight.
If all else fails, you may have the wrong blade on your mower.
Now, there's two types of different blades.
One is a mulching blade and the other is called a high lift.
Let's start with the mulching blade.
Mulching is exactly what it sounds like.
It chops up the the blades of grass into finer pieces.
And it does that by keeping the grass in the area longer.
And it's kind of like a ride in a blender.
And then the grass drops back into the lawn.
Now, why would you do this?
Well, that's because the fertilization and the moisture you put in
to growing your turf ends up in the leaf.
And if you just simply haul off that organic material
and don't make use of it elsewhere in compost or in garden beds,
or you simply just strip it off and throw it in the garbage, heaven forbid,
then what you're doing is throwing away money,
both in the form of what it costs you to put out water and to fertilization.
But if you're not going to mulch and you are going to bag,
chances are you are.
You wouldn't be here watching this video and you want to take those clippings off.
Then you may need the high lift blade and the difference there.
That blade is configured, has some different fins in it to create much more airflow,
create much more vacuum under the edges of the deck
and to create more air pressure exiting the mower deck
to lift out more of those grass, grass clippings more cleanly.
And if you've tried all the other things that I've mentioned
and you can't get it to resolve, then chances are you need to invest
in high lift blades and high lift blades are readily available
for pretty much any mower there is out there.
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