When do you move to an electric lawn mower?

TheTallOne17 said:

When I got my house with a relatively small yard I went for a plug in Kolbalt. The 13 Amp 21" for $200 and a 100ft extension cord is going strong 2 years later and will chew through just about anything; thick grass and weeds, sucker saplings up to 8 inches tall, its been a beast.

If you can deal with the slight inconvenience of cord management its well worth it. Though I would probably go battery powered for my weed eater if I were to buy today, as you move further faster with it

If I were to do that, I would want to engineer some sort of retractable extension cord off of a pole.

In reply to mtn :

Exactly. I already dislike mowing enough. Whipping around an extension cord would really increase my dislike. 

In reply to TheTallOne17 :

I was resisting the urge to brag about my 19-year-old electric mower with brushless motor and infinite run time.  I did try to turn it into a cordless once (and amazingly, only once) and the wheels are getting pretty wobbly.  Otherwise the only maintenance has been sharpening the blade and cleaning grass out from under the plastic motor cover every couple years. 

I do like simply flipping the mower over to get at the blade for sharpening, zero worries about oil or gas leaking out.

If I were buying a mower now, I absolutely would go with battery power over plug-in.  A 110V plug-in is limited to ~1500W or ~2hp.  Maybe there are non-USDM 220V mowers, but I'm pretty sure my mower has the type of AC motor which would not like to run on 2x its rated voltage. With fixed RPM and depth-of-cut, there are many times I have to use a glacially slow feed rate with 50% or less step-over to get an acceptable surface finish.

I just bough the 56v Ego push mower and I'm less than thrilled with it. 

We're a small house on .25 acre and it doesn't even come close to mowing the entire yard on one charge. I have the weed whacker and oddly I can weed whack the entire yard, then go back and mow the front on one charge. But if I try to mow the (admittedly larger) backyard on a fresh battery it only gets about 60% of the way through before the battery dies. The side discharge port is also hot garbage. Rather than have it eject directly out the side, it runs out the back, then makes a 90 degree turn, which is where all the grass piles up.  I was having to stop every 3-4 mins to clear it. 

On the upside, it is very quiet and I love that, sans fluids, it folds up vertically and takes very little space in my garage. I just don't think it's ready for prime time quite yet

I figured that our Honda mower is worth $0 not running, so let me at least fix that. Plus I kinda restored it not too long ago by replacing some of the broken plastic guards. I even waxed it. 

I pared down my order to just the minimum: $20.48 for a Genuine Honda carburetor from Jacks Small Engines. Just the float was like $30.

Then add shipping, gaskets, oil and tax to total $43.55. I know you can get a carb via Amazon, but Jacks' site helped me figure out exactly what I needed, so they got the sale. Plus, small business and all that. 

Order placed close to 6 p.m. Thursday.

Parts delivered Sunday morning (today) via standard shipping.

Replaced the carb, and the mower fired on the first pull. Just mowed the front lawn: no leaks, no issues, no nothing. It idles and runs as it did before. 

Nick, thank you for the offer to try out your electric, but I’m now thinking/hoping that I can get another 20 years out of our Honda. 

Before I mow the back, I’ll change the oil, clean it up, and give it some loving. 

Good as new. 

PS: The oil smelled like gas–I know, shouldn’t be surprised–so glad I changed it. 

In reply to David S. Wallens :

I'm glad I'm not the only person to ever have waxed a lawn mower.  Until now I was too embarrassed to admit it in public 

Foaming degreaser followed by some some of this spray wax that I found in the garage. The mower seems to like it. 

18 year old Toro started on the first pull from winter storage this past Saturday...

when the current Honda-powered mower E36 M3s the bed.  even with a good-running engine, the exhaust just plain stinks.

In reply to David S. Wallens :

Been doing this for years best push mower EVAR! and snow blower.

I'm now 1200 miles closer to you than I was a few months ago, no need for the snow blower, and on almost 3/4 an acre, the push mower isn't happening. I'm waiting for an electric rider that costs less than my daily driver. Maybe I'll make one? 
I currently have a Ryobi string trimmer and pole saw. I'm done with small engines. 

My current yard is on the small side but I went all-in on EGO maybe a year ago. Quiet, powerful enough, light, stores small on it's back folded up. Have grown to trimmer, edger, blower on all same batteries.  

They aren't heavy-duty but good enough for a suburban yard. 

In reply to MattGent :

The fact that the Ego can park standing up really intrigues me. Unfortunately, I'd still likely have to pull a car out of the garage to park it. 

docwyte said:

18 year old Toro started on the first pull from winter storage this past Saturday...

This is where I am except it's a 11 yo cub cadet. The first time it doesn't, it will get replaces with something electric. 

clutchsmoke said:

In reply to mtn :

Exactly. I already dislike mowing enough. Whipping around an extension cord would really increase my dislike. 

I have on three separate occasions cut an extension cord in half on our corded hedge trimmer... there's no way I wouldn't do it at least once a month with a corded lawnmower.

Interesting that this thread popped up just a few months before I went looking to see if such a thread existed... 2 mows ago I ran over a branch with our 10+ year old Toro and it berked something up such that when I mowed last time I had to have the cover off and spent half the time manually fiddling with the choke/throttle. Was just going to take it to the small engine shop, but saw a few electric ones on the auction site I browse periodically and got to thinking that might be nice. Since it seems like our chainsaw may also have seized up and died, it might be nice to be able to get rid of the small gas cans and only have to worry about keeping a battery charged.

They have three 56-volt Ego brushless ones that I'm going to have to keep an eye on... 

In reply to tremm :

Thanks for the extra feedback.

I actually just finished mowing. The Honda is still chugging along with its new carb. But when it's time, it will be time.

Thanks. 

I tried to convince myself to go battery, but just couldn't convince myself. I have to keep gas cans for the snowblower and snowmobiles, so it's not like I could eliminate gas powered tools/toys  

After 14 years of abusing the last craftsman until the deck rusted through and flexes enough to let the blade touch the ground, I went back to gas. This time a  Toro with  the smart store feature.

I was looking for a push mower recently.  And I was looking at electric.  But I bought a lightly used self-propelled Honda powered push mower for $30 at a yard sale.  So long live small ICE.

Aaaand all of the ones in that auction went for more than I was willing to pay. I'm also a bit wary of the Ego ones not having a side eject- that's how I run my gas mower 90% of the time (the other 10% is with the bag attached so I'm not blowing clippings into the pea gravel in the front beds or around the hot tub in back).

I'm thinking that for the remainder of this summer I may just see if one of the people who mows our neighbors' lawns will do ours as well and then take the mower in for service to decide whether to fix or replace it. 

I went battery for the new hose.  The old house lot in Dallas was a city lot so I used an old school push mower (rotary blades).  I traveled so much for work the wife had landscapers out a lot.  So for the new house I went Milwaukee.  The two batteries mow the whole yard, weed eat it and blow off all the clippings no problem. I need to get an edger now....  

It's mowing time again. The deck on my Toro gas has rusted to an unsafe level even for me. I think Im pulling the plug on the Ryobi. You can get the mower and trimmer in a package deal right now. In the meantime I had to pull the old DR brush and trail mower out. Thing is decades old and has more warnings on it than a modern baby crib. 

Have we mentioned the fact that Honda is reportedly getting out of the small ICE business??

I need to run out and buy another gas mower, even though I don't need one right now.  Heck, I might buy two!

In reply to vwcorvette (Forum Supporter) :

I'm curious... how does a deck rust out? I abuse the crap out of my mowers, but rust has never been a problem. Even when it lived in a shed with a rotted roof. 

In reply to Ian F (Forum Supporter) :

If you make a habit of mowing when the grass is wet and don't scrape accumulations of grass clippings from the underside of the deck, the build-up of wet grass holds moisture against the steel and encourages rusting.

I'm quite bad about maintaining my mowers, but I don't generally mow when the grass is wet for the sake of the grass.