Hi Guys,

Any thoughts on petrol vs electric lawn mowers?

My garden isn't huge, about 50ft long by about 20ft wide, but the hassle plus dangers of wires all over the lawn annoys me. Is it worth biting the bullet and investing in a petrol model?

Many thanks,
Dave.

Would a push mower work for your lawn?

How about a battery operated mower, no cords.

https://www.husqvarna.com/us/p... or if you prefer self-propelled https://www.husqvarna.com/us/p...
If you prefer however: Stihl https://www.stihlusa.com/produ...

A couple of words from my experience.
There are now literally dozens of different battery-powered lawnmowers, all of which have more than enough range and performances to cut your lawn. But the vast bulk are so flimsy they won't last to the end of the warranty period. Your local city dump is likely to have a couple at any given time. So spend your money only once and get a properly built and designed one.

DD has the SunJoe electric mower. Works great for her tiny lawn. I used it and it was fine. But the cord was similar to vacuuming and the grass catcher was so small it had to be emptied frequently. There were no adjustments settings and it dint mulch the cuttings fine enough. Folds down tight enough to out in the small outside utility closet. From Amazin $80

GF has a Ryobi (??) Battery powered mower deck that attaches to her weedwacker that turns it into a mower. Interesting concept that works! From Home Depot. About $100. But again , no settings, this has no grass catcher, and she goes through string like crazy!

Old neighbor had a full size electric mower from Ryobi, I think? It had some adjustments and was a light, full size mower and very quiet. I think she spent about $250 at Lowe's.

Many alternatives out there to use instead if the traditional gas mower. Good ones, too!

I had a manual mower a while back, drove me mad, a lot of work for not a great looking lawn.

I like the idea of the battery model though, much less fuss than cables and does away with the need for petrol. Is the power you get from them good enough?

davejones said:I had a manual mower a while back, drove me mad, a lot of work for not a great looking lawn.

I like the idea of the battery model though, much less fuss than cables and does away with the need for petrol. Is the power you get from them good enough?

It depends on how tall you let the grass grow. All good battery-powered lawnmowers (Husqvarna, Stihl, Dolkita etc) are more than powerful enough for any residential work unless you let pampas grass grow wild in your backyard. If you don't feel like disposing of cutting some also come with mulching kits and self-propelled ones are available as well.

I use a battery mower made by Worx and love it. The life is short (I think I got either 3 or 4 years out of it) but they are relatively inexpensive (less than $200). Just ordered a new one as the old one died. It works really well for getting into the tight spots and as a companion to our riding mower (we have a large lawn). In the spring I mow every 5-6 days to stay on top of new growth, and I always use the mulch feature so no picking up needed. I also have Worx battery powered weedwacker, blower, and hedger. I call them all my little orange toys. Lightweight, quiet, work well.

Depends on how much you want to spend.
As one poster said, battery powered ones wear out, the more you use them, the faster.
Usually it is just the battery pack but new packs are far, far from cheap.
I just had five re-celled for my drills and that was near 300 dollars.

For such a small lawn a GOOD and good and sharp , manual reel mower should work just fine.

For a gasoline one , a small used one might be best.

Electric with a cord, that depends on how well you deal with frustration.
Now many decades ago , my cousin fitted an electric one to work with a car battery. Worked well but heavy and needed charging before use.

What do you think of Gtech? I have been reading this review of their hedge trimmer ( https://www.toolsreview.uk/gtech-hedge-trimmer-review/ )and sounds pretty decent. I know they do a mower too so thought could look for a package deal with the two in it. The mower looks pricey though at about £400! Does anyone know if Gtech battery stuff is any good?

P.S I like the idea of built-in mulcher you mention, especially in the summer months where you are cutting a lot!

davejones said:What do you think of Gtech? I have been reading this review of their hedge trimmer ( https://www.toolsreview.uk/gtech-hedge-trimmer-review/ )and sounds pretty decent. I know they do a mower too so thought could look for a package deal with the two in it. The mower looks pricey though at about £400! Does anyone know if Gtech battery stuff is any good?

P.S I like the idea of built-in mulcher you mention, especially in the summer months where you are cutting a lot!

If you don't want to spend the big money for a Stihl, Echo or Husqvarna, look up Greenworks: it's a Chinese brand partly owned by Stihl.
However know that if you work a lot there's no alternative to coughing up a lot of money, either in one big installment (one quality product) or several smaller ones (fixing/replacing cheap and nasty products).

Yes, I also heard that Greenworks are good mowers. I decided to buy and try

Well now, I have an old two-stroke Lawn Boy.
I put in a new ignition control module and am amazed at how much better it ran.

I have decided to , if I mix it my self, run at around 32 to 1 with best compounds I can afford .
Yesterday I was mixing gas; I was using three different brands of oil as I had partial bottles and I did not want to have so many taking up space.
One was Stihl, one was a high tech true synthetic, label was one, and the other was a new purchased motorcycle racing true synthetic.
The last listed was syrupy thick.

Well I poured all three into an old 2.5 gallon metal gasoline can; started filling it with gasoline , 91 octane no stinking alcohol gasoline, from another plastic can.
These new plastic can are pieces of fecal debrsi, for safeties sake, the yellow spout popped out of the pouring can fell into the metal can.
Opening approx. 2 or so inches, ARRRGH, so I went to get a long tongs, can not fine one.
Sharon gives me a salad tong, metal with fork like claspers.
OK, better than nothing, so , I force it into the can; tongue is just long enough to reach plastic spout but , now there is approx. 4 ounces of gasoline in there with six ounces of oil, only my finger tips are still holding the tong.
It slips out of my fingers and joins the spout.

I was not, I repeat NOT going to dump out the oil-gas mix and try to jiggle the new contents out.
I find a long plastic fork two tooth fork ; I can manage to jam it into the tong pivot pin area and get one handle up to where my finger tips can just grab it.
Cannot close it so i can pull it out; HA , hold can at an angle so tong does not keep falling flat on bottom as oil mix makes every thing very slippery.
Fifteen or so attempts later, I am able to pull one tong handle out far enough that I can take the fork and close other tong handle enough to pull handles out.
HA, success, it seems the actual tong part is not going to come out of the hole as forcing it in was done with cone shaped object, i.e. small to large now it was the mostly flat large end, no taper ( Think of forcing a come into a hole point first and then trying to pull it out butt first.)

Brute force removes tongs. nothing ruined but spout is still in can.
I take the plastic two-teeth fork and force the one tooth into the air vent on the spout and remove without any more drama.

I put spout back on plastic jug and fastened it tightly.
I decide to add a genuine power booster, not octane but actual power, think of nitro methane only a far less volatile compound.
Fill gasoline can and lawn mower
Now I have been around and worked on gasoline engines for decades; when I fired up the Lawn Boy, it sounded much, much better than it had ever in the years I had it and cut long grass with a gusto.
I am not going to spend big bucks to continually use power booster, this was from VP, but that stuff does work.