Do Electric Chipper Shredders Work?

Last Updated on October 2, 2023 by Kyle Whitley

Everyone likes to have a clean yard.  If you are like most folks after winter, your yard is littered with little all kinds of twigs, leaves, pine cones, or broken branches.  You might also need to do some cleaning up your shrubs and landscaping. Do electric chipper shredders work for cleaning up a debris-filled lawn?

One thing that you should remember is that it is important to keep your garden clean and free from excessive debris. After a trim and clipping, your yard and garden can quickly fill up with dead branches, leaves, and plants.

Generally, clearing debris can take hours of work but garden shredders and wood chippers can cut down this time significantly. Many gardeners wonder if these machines actually work. In this blog, we explain in detail why electrical chipper shredders are so useful to keep your gardens clean.

How Do Electric Chipper Shredders Work?

In a nutshell, all garden chippers and shredders available in the market have one thing in common. They cut, grind, chip and shred organic material, mostly leaves, branches and grass to reduce their volume. This makes it easier to handle the debris for mulching or composting in your yard.

The machines have a gearbox that uses pulleys and v-belts to connect the engine to a set of blades inside. They have a pulley that controls the engine’s cutting speed and sets the speed at which the blades rotate. There is a v-belt that transmits power from the engine to the rotating blades. The user can shift gears to control the speed and power of the machine.

The Structure of an Electric Chipper Shredder

Most residential chipper shredders have a 2-in-1 combo and include both the chipper and shredder. To work properly, these machines make use of sharp blades and semi-sharp flails that are used for cutting and grinding wood and plants. The blades and cutters on an electric chipper shredder are attached to a heavy flywheel that is powered either by a battery or direct electrical connection.

Most new models come with two separate chutes. The bigger chute is used for feeding the machine with leaves or grass. There is also a side chute that is narrower and longer, used for feeding stalks, branches, and limbs into the machine. Higher-end models come with a downward facing hopper to help you rake the leaves indirectly. This can be very useful if you don’t want to feed them by hand or a shovel.

There is a third chute on the machine that is used to discharge shredded debris. You can attach a collection bag to it or set it up to spew out the mulch all over the lawn.

Benefits of Electric Chipper Shredders

If you do a lot of gardening or have a big yard with lots of trees on your property, an electric chipper shredder can make your life so much easier. There are five main reasons why most homeowners choose to buy one.

Electric Chipper Shredders are Very Easy to Set Up and Use

Some people are reluctant to buy a garden shredder because they think that chipper shredders are quite difficult to use. While this was true a decade ago, it isn’t the case anymore with new models.

You can rest assured that these machines are not too difficult to set up and even beginners will be able to set them up and use in a matter of half an hour.

Make sure that you read the manual and follow the instructions as outlined.

If you are concerned about the size and weight, you should know that most electric chipper shredders are quite compact and weigh around 30 – 50 pounds. Larger machines that are meant for bigger yards are heavier but they should still be easier to set up than disposing of the debris for the whole yard on your own.

You, Will, Save a Lot of Time

The biggest benefit of chipper shredders is that they will save you a lot of time. If disposal of garden debris takes you three hours on average, you will be able to complete the task in half an hour with an electrical machine.

Electrical Chipper Shredders Are Great For the Environment

Although gas chipper shredders may perform just as well as electric models, they aren’t really that great for the environment. Electric chipper shredders don’t use any fossil fuels and run on batteries or the grid. They are obviously a better choice for the eco-conscious gardener.

Make Your Own Compost

Perhaps one of the biggest reasons why homeowners and gardeners opt for their own chipper shredders is because they help you create your own mulch and compost with very little trouble.

Electrical garden shredders can help you turn garden debris into smaller, chipped clippings that can be spread over your garden and yard. These clippings are excellent at decomposing and provide great natural fertilizer for your garden.

This will save you trips to the dump during the lockdown and also lower the cost of buying fertilizer.

Electrical Chipper Shredders Are Quite Powerful

One concern that many gardeners have with electrical models is that these machines are not as powerful as gas powered chipper shredders. This is true to some extent. Gas powered units do create a lot more power.

However, electric powered garden shredders have more efficient engines. Some of them can generate up to 15 amps of power. That should be enough power to cut and shred all kinds of debris.

Electric chipper shredders can chop up clippings in different, sizes, big and small, with ease. You can even put in smaller tree branches for shredding if they fit. Just make sure that they are not too large and do not feed them in a hurry.

Most electric garden shredders can easily cut and chop branches and twigs that are less than three inches long.

So do they work?

They absolutely do.  You just have to keep in mind that these are not commercial chipper shredders so you can’t cut down a tree and hope you can chip and shred the whole tree. If you are in the market for a chipper shredder it might serve you well to check some out when your shopping.