Lawnmowers

mscard88 said:
You have grass out there? Not the smokin' kind, on the ground kind. ;):D
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Yes, small front lawn. It's the only organic thing I can keep alive, besides myself and the cat!

Oil changed, air filter cleaned and blade sharpened. Oil was reasonably clean, but it felt good to put some fresh Mobil 1 5W-30 in there.

The mower does double duty to hoover up all the leaves from my tree in the fall...why rake them?
 
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mtuomi said:
Small yard, and my lawn guy is extremely unreliable. I need one. It's small and flat so don't need to spend thousands. Listening to any suggestions...
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Black and Decker makes a Cordless Trimmer with a carriage that converts it into a small mower: https://www.blackanddecker.com/en-u...n-3in1-compact-electric-lawn-mower/besta512cm

Seems to me that it would be just the ticket for a small yard. My own yard is too big and uneven for that to work. I have a B&D 40 Volt Cordless Trimmer, plus a Corded
Trimmer for heavy cutting (which I need at times). I have an old gas trimmer as well, but am tired of struggling with it (it works when it wants to - never mind what I want).

Dave
 
I bought a cheap 8hp mower from a box store 20 years ago. Cheap no name engine. Still runs great. Can't find replacement blades for it anymore, and its getting a little hard to start. Have only changed the oil a few times and air filter once or twice. Might try to find another cheap-o replacement for the next 20 years.
 
We USED to have a lawn. Small enough that one catcher bag on the mower and you were done. Re-landscaped the whole place a bit over 10 years ago and now have NO lawn. Haven't owned a lawn mower in years. If I had a small one I'd get a decent mower with at least 5 hp. Our son has a riding mower, but their lot is about an acre and a good portion of that is grass. It will be very handy when the grass grows in enough (hydro seeded a few weeks ago).
 
Lachlan said:
I'm sure the baseball, soccer and football teams think you're a genius. ;)
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They don’t play in front of suburban houses, last I checked?

(I have no clue what your comment means in relation to a house.)
 
denverpilot said:
They don’t play in front of suburban houses, last I checked?

(I have no clue what your comment means in relation to a house.)
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Where I live, kids play outside. They play sports on the grass, they ride bikes on singletrack trails and swim in lakes, ponds, rivers and creeks. Grass grows on the ground. Colorado can grow plenty of grasses. All you need is a little less urban sprawl adding excess heat to the environment. ;)
 
Lachlan said:
Where I live, kids play outside. They play sports on the grass, they ride bikes on singletrack trails and swim in lakes, ponds, rivers and creeks. Grass grows on the ground. Colorado can grow plenty of grasses. All you need is a little less urban sprawl adding excess heat to the environment. ;)
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Oh I see. Our kids in our area play in the dirt on their dirt bikes, go karts, and such, and a bunch are into horses if their folks do that or decided feeding a hay burner was a good idea for 20+ years. :)

Nothing grows that isn’t irrigated from wells pumped from a non-replenish-able aquifer. Nobody waters the grass in a high desert.

We have one creek. It’s usually very small other than the occasional frog strangler that runs it over the county road deep enough to float a Honda about once every five years or so for one day.
 
I mowed my lawn today. Then went in and called a lawn company. 4 hours in 102 degree heat. Screw that.
 
4 hours, holy cow. No way in hell would I ever spend that much time, do you have a football size lawn?
 
4hrs just means you need a bigger mower.
 
weilke said:
4hrs just means you need a bigger mower.
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Definitely. But if I do the four acres completely in one go, it takes about four hours on the tractor.

If the big tractor is broken the backup lawn tractor takes longer. That suuuuuucks. I’d rather spend a couple hours fixing the diesel tractor if I can.
 
As someone in the landcare business I'll second what a couple of others have said about the Toro Personal Pace. There's a reason you see more of these mowers being used than any other - they're that good, for a reasonable price. If you had any hills at all I'd suggest the AWD (all wheel drive) model.

I know why the 6PC family fired their lawn care guys a couple of years ago. But what's your beef with your guy?
 
denverpilot said:
Definitely. But if I do the four acres completely in one go, it takes about four hours on the tractor.

If the big tractor is broken the backup lawn tractor takes longer. That suuuuuucks. I’d rather spend a couple hours fixing the diesel tractor if I can.
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With the 60in on my little tractor I can do 2.5acres in 90 minutes. It's hilly and irregular in shape. My neighbor does 3.5 acres in the same time using a 60in zero turn. But then, his ZT can't fill groundhog burrows with dirt or drag some logs out of the woodlot.
 
We had a Toro Persoal Pace mower that still started on the first or second pull, AFTER sitting all winter WITH 10% ethanol gas in it, 15 years after we bought it. I'd rebuilt the drive clutch once or twice, it had been through several blades and a new set of wheels and bearings. We beat the hell out of that mower and now my son has it. It has electric start, but we never used it after the first battery died a couple of years in.

We replaced it with a $600 Honda that mulches everything. Fancy double blades. No electric start. Who needs it when it starts on the first pull, every time? Never have used the bag, even in tall grass. Season two so far; it starts and runs great, and if the blade is sharp the lawn is perfectly smooth and looks great.
 
For a small yard buy the simplest mower you can find. The less features the better. A bare minimum push only side discharge mower.

Mulching is hit and miss as to whether it works between models and unless you really care I don’t feel it’s worh the extra cost and weight.

Self propelled sounds good but it makes the mower bulkier, the belts wear out... the old ones that just had a chain drive wheel with teeth that dropped onto the front wheels were ok by even then I can always push a bare bones mower on flat ground faster than the self propel can move it.

Electric start- really? If you’re not strong enough to pull start you’re not strong enough to push the mower. More bulk, more to maintain. Just don’t. Make sure to put fuel stabilizer in the tank at the end of every season and run it for a minute so the stabilizer gets into everything and it should start easily.

As a teenager I had a job mowing a cemetery and I went through a lot of mowers over the years I did it. Less is more with push mowers, trust me.
 
cowman said:
Mulching is hit and miss as to whether it works between models and unless you really care I don’t feel it’s worh the extra cost and weight.
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Gonna have to disagree with you there. We mulch and I'll never go back to bagging. The old Toro mulched OK if the grass wasn't too long. The new Honda does an amazing job. Probably mostly the blades. It saves so much time and effort, and no hauling stuff to the curb to be picked up... no bags of rotting grass when you mow the day after trash pickup. One of my primary criteria for a mower now is how well it mulches.

Maybe we don't really disagree... but I'm definitely one of the people who really care.
 
DaleB said:
Gonna have to disagree with you there. We mulch and I'll never go back to bagging. The old Toro mulched OK if the grass wasn't too long. The new Honda does an amazing job. Probably mostly the blades. It saves so much time and effort, and no hauling stuff to the curb to be picked up... no bags of rotting grass when you mow the day after trash pickup. One of my primary criteria for a mower now is how well it mulches.

Maybe we don't really disagree... but I'm definitely one of the people who really care.
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I don’t do either. Although if I needed to, I’d prefer mulching to a bag as well. Here it’s perfectly acceptable just blow it out the side and leave it.
 
flhrci said:
Thought this might help some one. :)

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"Genius"? Meh. That's merely smart. Genius would be if he used these instead of gas mowers for the outboard units.
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Twenty one years ago I was headed home from the office for lunch and saw an elderly neighbor lying on the ground. He'd fallen and couldn't get up so I helped him into his house, then noticed his lawn was overgrown. So I mowed it for a couple of years, then one 100 degree day thought about the cleaning service van in their drive. "Why am I out here for free, when they're there 3 days a week, in the a/c, being paid?" So I started charging them. Once I did that my phone rang off the hook from people wanting me to mow for them.

As kids came along I scaled back, as they grew older I let the business grow. Right now I'm around 75 accounts and have to turn down new calls. I'm fortunate to depart the office at 3:30 most days. And some days I get antsy and am able to take half the day (or the entire day) off to get a head start.

I have an Exmark ZTR that's awesome. Stihl trimmers, edgers and blowers. For the smaller areas the ZTR won't go I use the Toro Personal Pace. I have a 22" AWD and a 30" TimeMaster Personal Pace mowers. The 22" gets replaced every 2-3 years.

Over the years I've had dozens of people ask me about mowing for a second job. I tell them if they're doing it for the money, don't do it. The last thing on earth I'd want to do when I leave one job is go to another job. I absolutely love mowing, the exercise, being outside, etc. I do other landcare too, but mowing is what I enjoy.

I've made the mistake of trying to help others get started. 100% of the time they've ended up quitting because IT'S HARD WORK. I'll say this, I don't have many bad days at the office, but when I do, ten minutes after leaving work it's not even a blip on the radar. Mowing takes your mind off everything else.
 
We moved from our home on a hilly, bumpy, weedridden, dry lot in California to an airpark in Florida. I finally have a large, flat lawn, and absolutely love mowing it. I got a John Deere E120, plus use the Echo weedeater to edge the driveway and get where the mower can’t get. I hated yardwwork at our old house, because there wasn’t a flat square inch and it was too dry to grow grass, but weeds flourished. When I was a kid I always liked mowing the lawn, and now in retirement I’m back to that.

Catch some rays, have a beer or two, get some exercise from raking and pruning the trees and hedges, and take pride in the fact that it looks great and I did it myself. What’s not to love about that?
 
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