I ordered a John Deere LA155 riding mower the other day. I have mixed feelings about it.
At our old place, we had a smallish lawn. Using our Black & Decker cordless electric mulching mower, I could mow the grass in about 45 minutes. It worked quite well, and handled our lawn with few problems. The only times I had problems were when I would either try to mow the grass while it was too wet or when I had let it grow too tall. On those occasions, it would run out of juice before I was 100% finished. If I had to do it over again, I think I would buy a corded version, primarily because it would be much lighter than pushing around the cordless version with its heavy battery. Generally, however, it worked quite well.
The main things I liked about it were (1) never having to drive to the gas station to buy gas for the mower, and (2) it was quiet! That's one thing that I find really annoying: The constant drone of gas-powered mowers every weekend -- and most weeknight evenings! Particularly in the spring, before the weather has grown so hot and humid, it's nice to sit outside and enjoy the nice, peaceful sounds of-- RRRRRooooaaarrrr!!! *sigh* Let's go inside where it's quieter.
If I had the money, I would buy all of my neighbors electric lawn mowers. Failing that, it would be nice if we could all agree to mower our lawns at the same time on the same 2 days of the week -- 2 hours of RRRRROOOOAAAAARRRR!!!! a week, rather than spread out continuously. Oh well.
Unfortunately, our new place sits on a 1 acre lot with lots of grass. We plan on reducing how much grass we have -- vegetable garden, wildflowers, decorative grasses, playground with mulch, perhaps someday a rock garden out front, etc. However, at the moment we've still got nearly an acre of grass to mow. And our 19" cordless electric mower just won't cut it -- literally.
I did try last fall, at the end of the growing season. The cordless made it through the front lawn without too many problems, taking about a full charge and 45 minutes to complete. The back lawn, however, is much larger and has a much tougher type of grass. It took several full charges to finally finish cutting it. During the spring growing season, when the grass needs to be mowed twice a week, there is just no way that I could keep up. (And if I tried, I wouldn't have any time left for, say, planting that garden that I've been talking about!)
So I began seeking a new lawn mower. Before turning to John Deere and gasoline, however, I poked about to see whether there was an electric riding mower. There is: The Electric Ox MP! It looks very cool, but with the mower kit, it runs about $10,000. Okay, not that cool.
Then I discovered that there are several electric robotic lawn mowers, including RoboMow, the Husqvarna Automower, and the Lawnbott. They are all extremely quiet, which I really like! Unfortunately, given the size of our lawn and the cost of the robotic mowers, I decided that they just weren't going to work for me, at least not yet.
So I settled on a rather traditional choice -- a big, loud, gasoline-powered riding mower. On the plus side, it has a 48" blade and a 22 hp engine, so I'm hoping that I'll be able to at least get the lawn mowed quickly, albeit not quietly. Plus, I'll be able to attach a snow blade to clear our somewhat steep and long driveway of snow in the winter, as well as perhaps add a utility trailer at some point for hauling stuff (soil, mulch, compost, plants) to and from the garden.
One nice thing about it: It has a 12-volt electrical outlet, along with an optional fan that I can mount on there to stay cool while I'm mowing in July. Ahh!
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