It really isn’t that hard. Check out a Youtube video or 3 on it and consider doing it yourself. I use to maintain a 3 blade tractor and I got pretty good at sharpening. Main reason, it was almost as cheap to buy new blades as to get them sharpened so I bought an extra set and proceeded to rotate the blades every few months.
That’s a good idea if you want to spend the time selling stuff. But it doesn’t negate the fact that the batteries are very expensive.
I would say that’s true with a 2 stroke trimmer but I wouldn’t say that about a lawn mower. My gas mower starts as fast it takes to start an electric and it’s a much much better value both in initial purchase price and life of product. It will also mow all day long on a gallon of gas. You’d need multiple batteries and a fast charger to come close that kind of utility value and the batteries will never hold up over time making the cost higher.
I put up with the life span of batteries for my drills and other small tools because the batteries are cheap.
Overall when you factor in gas, noise and pollution, giving up on gas for electric is awesome. If your budget conscious go with a corded. They last as long as a gas powered one and cost even less. They have virtually no maintenance. (of course excepting blades, all mowers have blades to deal with).
Mileage varies, I suppose. I had several different gas-powered mowers over my life before I got the EGO and every time I went to start one it was a question how many yanks it would take. Sometimes one – yay! Sometimes twenty-seven wouldn’t do it and I’d have to go away and try later. Does it need the primer button? Maybe that’ll work, or maybe that’ll just flood it. And stopping the mower to get something out of the way (my mowed areas tend to be full of miscellaneous, from hoses to drainpipes to chunks fallen out of trees or dropped there by a dog to laundrybaskets etc . . .) would restart the gamble.
I’m still trying to get out of the somewhat hazardous habit of trying to hang on to a running mower with one hand while moving Object with the other. It’s electric, Thorny! Let it stop, it’ll start again, no extra work, no problem!
Well now you’re making more of an environmental point and that’s fine. But electric mowers are not noise free and may fall within the range of a quiet gas mower.
I find a battery better all around than a 2 stroke when dealing with trimmers but I don’t see the same advantage with mowers.
If I had to buy a new mower one of the things I would look at is a power driven one with reverse. I have a small lawn but it’s a constant back and forth movement which is hard on my back. If the battery mower is significantly lighter that would be a plus if I couldn’t get reverse on one.
My family had a gas-powered mower with a small battery that allowed for a key start. That was good for me because I always had trouble with the pull starter.
I’m surprised nobody has thought to match up capacitor batteries with a lawn mower. it seems like the perfect fit. There’s plenty of real estate above the deck for motor and batteries and they would charge super fast.
my gas chain saw was a nightmare to start until I discovered starting fluid. It’s not worth replacing because I have an electric chain saw for around the house. The modern gas mowers have primers and usually start on the first pull. I suppose if I used starting fluid it would start on a half pull.
27 pulls would qualify as a stress test. That battery mower probably saved you from a heart attack. But anything that takes over 2 pulls on a modern mower means there’s something wrong with it.
My electric has a tail (cord) because I have a handy outdoor outlet and it has less height in the body so gets under bushes easier. The thing is really light to push around but has a good amount of grunt, gives off no fumes and does a great and very quiet job.
In 20 odd years of using corded mowers I have only sliced one cord and learned to drink after mowing instead of before.
They are worth looking at for small spaces if you have the outlet.
Maybe. Or maybe, although I’m fairly strong in some ways for a woman my size and age, I’m not good at that particular very fast yank which pullstarters require.
I loved my Fiskars reel mower. It lasted about 8 years before the sprocket wore out and the chain started jumping off. I was slow to fix it, so my wife bought a Ryobi battery powered mower a couple of years ago. It’s fine, I don’t love it, it struggles hard to deal with thick St. Augustine. It does mow pretty well otherwise.
I really did love my dad’s old Black & Decker plug in mower. It was light, and it could mow just about any height grass.
Your experience is different than mine. My gas mower was like thorny’s. Sure, there was “something wrong with it.” But that something was something neither I nor several repairpersons were able to identify.
And There may be the quietest gas mower which approaches the sound level of the loudest electric, but I have never heard either. Absent legitimate sound studies, I doubt you have either. I quickly googled several sites mentioning 65-75 db for electric, and ~95 db for bass (w/ doubling every 6 db). IF there is a point to be made in favor of gas mowers, it might be made without gross exaggerations.
I’ve only used electric mowers. I have nowhere to store gasoline, and the ones I’ve had used a power cord. Mine is at least ten years old and runs just fine.
We went from a good Honda gas to an EGo electric–there is no comparison on sound level. I’d wear ear muff style hearing pro with the Honda. With the EGo I wear earbuds and listen to music at normal volume. I did get new new battery this year under warranty, fyi.
And I’m describing three or four of them.
– I do usually wear hearing protectors with my EGO; but that’s because the wheel drive hits one of my particular Unpleasant Frequencies. An Ego that isn’t self-propelled wouldn’t do that, and mine wouldn’t do it to most people – I find a lot of noises seriously unpleasant that don’t appear to bother most people.
Here’s a cite that tested various motors for sound level.
Highest electric 80 db. lowest gas 81.9.
There’s no doubt that gas is louder but the range allows for a choice of gas if electric doesn’t meet your needs or budget.
Though if price is the concern and the yard is small, plug in mowers are the cheapest mower.
You bring up a point about noise levels that is often overlooked in sound tests. The frequency level. In the early days of jet airlines people found jet engines more annoying than piston engines even though they were quieter. Of course now they’ve evolved jet engines to be MUCH quieter. But the early jet engines were seriously annoying.
When you look at power tools it isn’t just the decibels. Leaf blowers have been a bane on society from the beginning. Part of it was clearly the 2 cycle engine. Part of it was the blower components. It was the worst of both worlds. I have a battery powered blower and it’s still annoying because of the frequency of the blower. It could be engineered to be quieter but it wasn’t. That takes up space and costs money to baffle out the sound.
My 4 stroke lawn mower has a quiet muffler on it. It’s not objectionable to listen too.so it doesn’t affect my purchase price point. If I had to replace it today I would look at a battery mower if the price point was the same and the run time was sufficient and it used something other than a lithium battery. I’m not a fan of lithium batteries because I’ve had a number of them fail. One of them failed to the point it got hot and started expanding while being charged. I don’t know how close it was to exploding but I don’t want that happening in my garage. This was a battery for a gas powered motorcycle. I switched back to a lead battery.
I think it’s great that you got it replaced under warranty. Again, I don’t think much of Lithium batteries because of the number of failures I’ve had with them. For smaller batteries like my drills, mini-saws, hedge trimmers they are the cats meow. They outperform the Cadmium batteries. And if they fail I can replace them cheaply so I’m forgiving of their shorter life span. Not the case for bigger batteries. They are VERY expensive.
If someone buys a battery powered mower I would recommend an extended warranty.
My charger shuts off if the battery’s hot. And I know that feature’s working, not because of anything that went wrong with the battery, but because if I’ve run it to low battery on a hot day the charger won’t start up until the battery cools down. (The battery isn’t dangerously hot at that point; I can still handle it barehanded with no problem, it’s not swollen, it isn’t damaged. There’s obviously a safety factor built into the charger.)
The mower also shuts down if the battery’s getting hot (see above.)
I don’t know when they started building these features in, but I think they’re probably now standard.