Al-Ko Silentec 4000 garden shredder October 2011
Al-Ko garden shredder first look
Shredding your garden waste not only reduces
it to a fraction of its original size, but speeds up the composting process, too. Shredders can be bulky and noisy, though, so Which? Gardening was keen to take a first look at this new Silentec one from Al-Ko
The Al-Ko Silentec 4000 (£399 from The Green Reaper) is a new addition to the Al-Ko range of garden shredders. It claims to be quiet, efficient and will chomp through anything up to 4cm thick. We gave it a try on our conifer prunings to see if it lived up to its claims.
How quiet is the Al-Ko Silentec 4000?
We found that this garden shredder is, indeed, very quiet. The shredder motor produces a gentle whirring sound, and when we put our conifer-hedge prunings through it the sound turned into a steady crunch, which you'd expect. Despite this shredder being impressively quiet, at 94db it is slightly louder than our current Best Buy shredder, which is only 89db.
Self-feeding shredder
The shredder works on a gear shredding system, which means that a rotating, toothed gear wheel draws material in to chop and crush it against a fixed metal plate, turning it into compostable-sized pieces.
Combined with a powerful 2300w motor, we found that it pulled most of our prunings through with great ease and there was no need to push or force them. During our testing, the shredder didn’t stop or jam once, but it does have a useful reverse function if it starts to struggle.
Easy manoeuvrability
At 24kg, this shredder is slightly lighter than our current Best Buy shredder. It has a large handle and good weight distribution, too, with two large rear wheels. We found it easy to move around and stable while in use.
Getting started
Our shredder arrived in a large box and needed a small amount of self-assembly before it was up and running. It requires a cross-headed screwdriver to attach the wheels to the frame and the main shredder unit has to be bolted to the frame (bolts and spanner are included). Bolting it together was fairly simple and one person could do it without assistance.
The shredder has a 6m heavy-duty flex lead, with a rubberised plug at one end and a tough two-pin plug at the other, which clips securely into the shredder unit. It should certainly be tough enough to withstand most general wear and tear, although we would advise that you still use an RCD device with it to reduce the risk of accidental electrocution, and you may need to combine this with an extension lead to reach the end of the garden.
Our verdict on the Al-Ko Silentec shredder
The shredder happily chomped through material up to 3cm thick, but it didn't quite cope with anything bigger than that. We put through some branches of about 4cm in thickness to see if it could live up to it's claim, but it only managed to crush them a bit rather than breaking them up. We put the same sized branches through our Best Buy shredder, which seemed to cope with them much better, chopping them into little pieces.
Pros: quiet, powerful and stable, this shredder should be capable of dealing with most of your garden waste.
Cons: it struggled to shred any pieces larger than 30mm and did not perform as well as our current Best Buy.
We recommend sticking to our Best Buy shredder; it's quieter, can process thicker material and is up to £80 cheaper to buy.
