Electric Mower
 

I'm beginning the process of moving into a house, and that means I now have a lawn. It may be a postage stamp, but it still needs mowing.

My dad doesn't spend money often, but when he does, he's impulsive, giving little thought to it. He decided to buy a battery powered push mower for me.

It was dusk before I got around to cutting the grass last night. I fired the thing up, which is like turning on a box fan as far as noise goes. The mower has headlights which actually came in handy. I put the deck on the highest setting since the grass was about 8" tall. The motor adjusts output and blade speed depending on the load put on it. The whole thing weighs 45 lbs and feels like you're pushing nothing. It was the most satisfying mow I've ever done.

A reel mower would have been fine, but I'm not complaining about my dad's gift.

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Now what to do with the boring backyard? I'm thinking it has too much gravel, and I might take out the crushed rock and extend the grass, putting stepping stones in for the path. I'm happy to hear all suggestions of what to plant, particularly along the fence, or how to make the backyard more appealing.

I would get one that plugs into 120v power.
I used a 120v mower from 2006 to about 2017.
No battery to replace.

Yeah, that was always my thought, especially if there's no trees to navigate.

Personally I was going to either get a reel mower, or a robot mower (the extremes in price). After that, corded seemed like my next choice.

Very happy with this though, and I can use it at my other house with a larger yard and trees. Currently have the neighbor kid mowing for $10. Perhaps other 40v tools will appeal to me too.

I've bought into the Ryobi line of 18v brushless tools and have been happy with them, though I'm a light user.

Glad to see you liked it. I have looked at their 40v trimmer to replace our ryobi gas trimmer. I really like the power of the gas, it's an older 31cc model not the newer "low emissions" 29cc. But, it has no adjustment for the carb and the fuel lines leak. I don't have enough property to need the gas version.

Can't speak to the 40v trimmer, but after today should be able to say something about an 18v one.

I've got months of my life on gas powered ones from the huge property I grew up on, plus working on the chain gang, so I have plenty of opinions on what works well and what doesn't.

I just recently bought a Worx 20V trimmer, and I love it. While coming with only one battery is kinda lame, it was only $40 (and replacement batteries are 50 a crack). I like that these are "Power Share" batteries: they have the usual run of 20V tools, but they also have some tools (including a lawnmower) that you just put two batteries in and it's a 40V system. I would consider getting the mower too but I just bought a new craftsman gas mower with a bagger. I was shocked to see that the mower is OHV, I didn't know that was a thing.

I have a fair bit of grass I mow with very little trimming, so a gas mower makes sense, but my gas trimmers always got gummed up and just sucked in general.

I was thinking I'd have preferred a mower that uses my existing 18v batteries in series to produce something approaching 40v. That's an extra charger on my workbench now. My guess is Ryobi wanted to take the possibility of the 2 battery packs being at different states of health out of the equation by combining it into a single pack. That, and more profit selling a different battery. Their whole marketing though is that all their tools use the share the same battery connector so there is always backwards and forwards compatibility.

I confuse easily. Yard ≠ lawn?

I'm impressed by your ability to find difference, as I hadn't noticed or intended to use different terminology.

Perhaps I consider a lawn to be a nicely maintained section of grass, whereas my yard in Vancouver is a weed-ridden combination of moss, grass, weeds, and clover.

Vancouver yard is a bit bigger with trees to navigate, but the silverton lawn is small with no obstacles.

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