Cordless Electric Lawn Mower

I used a corded one for a long time. Overall, it was about as convenient as the gas powered one due to needing less maintenance but having more hassle with the cord.

Only an opinion.

If cost is the driver, buy a used mower from a yard sale for $25 to $50 and you will save a huge amount of cash.

The other option is to employ the neighbor's kid and pay them to do the work with their own equipment.

Cost isn't the driver in this case. I am used to gasoline powered Briggs and Straton engines on my mowers. This is sort of like an interest more or less. If you did not own a mower today, and had to make a decision between these two options, which would it be and why?

Complex question, indeed.

My property is larger, so I needed a zero turn John Deere to keep the lawn in check.

If my property was much smaller and the type of grass was not as fast growing as here in the state of Florida, an electric mower would have my interest.

As far as economics go, I had a 7-year old Toro that required no service during its lifetime. It even sat in an outside shed for years in Ohio and after changing oil and gas started on the first pull. It never required more than two pulls.

If time was a factor, I might consider paying someone to do it.

For electric propulsion I would find building a car more interesting.

A gas mower be my choice. Used a corded mower as a youth on my parents lawn. The cord and small cutting path made more work. The mower was durable but the deck was steel not plastic. In dense grass the mower deck will ride up so that the wheels will not touch the ground because they are too lite. My dad had planted Zoysia grass it was so dense that it was like a mower with out wheels with the electric. Real pain!!! The battery type my be a little better. I do question battery life in cutting time and years of service. Its seem that on most cordless equipment that the battery is about 75% of the cost. Would not want to replace it yearly.

Unless I was forced to use electric by "community bylaws", I wouldn't.

If sound levels are the requirement, there are options for modification of gasoline powered mowing equipment to reduce the noise signature. Most would need to be applied by you, the owner rather than as a purchase option.

If service life is the criteria, gasoline or diesel power is the only logical choice, even with continual maintenance costs included. Cost of ownership considerations under current battery technology still points heavily towards gasoline powered.

Just my 3 cents worth (inflation, you know!).

Bought THIS for the wife last spring... birthday in May.

She loves it... we have a small yard and it take about 10 minutes to mow with a power mower, about 15-20 to do it with the reel, and you get a little workout in the process. You do need to go around the yard an pick up sticks and other things that can get tangled up. It's a good idea to keep it handy and just do a little here and there over waiting of a big mess then having to mow down a lot.

Some times low tech beats the hell out of high tech.

I have a narrower version, it's great. It cost me £29 a year ago, over the winter the petrol didn't go stale, the batteries didn't sulphate and no one put a shovel through the power lead. I sincerely hope the motive power source outlasts the mower.

I had an old reel type push mower and it got to be a real pain to push, so I bought a couple of Alaskan Huskies and rigged a harness for them to pull the lawn mower around. And of course I named the dogs "Briggs" and "Stratton".

Now back to reality... An electric might work if all you had to mow was say 100 square feet (10 feet by 10 feet), but if you have anything like a real lawn, I would go gas powered. I can't even imagine mowing 1/3 acre using an electric. This would be like using a post hole digger to dig a ditch. With 1/3 acre, I would probably buy a ride around garden tractor.

Bill

Good points all. A lawn tractor will definitely be in the future. The front lawn is a little small, but the back yard is in the ~9k sq.ft. range or so.

When we decided to "Go Green" my wife and I sold our rider and front wheel tracktor drive walking gas powered mowers. Used some of the procedes to buy a Neuton cordless rotary mower (They have a tracktor front wheel drive model, now.). However, ours works great, even in wet grass in the spring. Here's a link to a complete essay on that baby including some pix of it cutting very tall, wet weeds with the discharge gate closed in order to mulch...

http://www.green-metroplex.com/factoids/In_Vivo/Neuton.html

We still like our Neuton Cordless Mower and so do our neighbors (being a senior - I hate to work in the heat so I get out at the crack of cool dewey dawn to mow and my neighbors no longer come to their porches and glare at me :-). They can't hear it inside their homes.