Someone I know has a house with a small yard. All their tools are internal combustion. Personally if it were me I’d probably stick with the internal combustion lawnmower but have everything else be electric due to how small the yard is.
Which begs the question, what all yard implements are available in both an internal combustion and electric power source option?
Push lawnmower, weed whacker, chainsaw, snowblower, hedge trimmers, tiller, leaf blower. What all else? I don’t do a lot of yard work as I have an apartment but I’m genuinely curious.
Generally speaking how much cheaper is an electric tool vs internal combustion?
The last house my wife and I owned had a very small yard. Used an electric lawn mower, it would take 20 minutes to mow. But I still had a nice gas powered weed eater so I used it. A tank of gas lasted me a couple years.
Now we have moved to a house with a much larger yard. The electric mower took me over an hour and the need for long extension cords was a pain. I got rid of it and bought a nice self propelled gas mower. But, my gas powered weed eater crapped out so I went with a battery powered model. No gas or power cords. Neither of these items have been used for about 8 months though, we won a years worth of lawn service and they do all the mowing and trimming. We have been discussing keeping the service at the end of the year, it’s been nice not having to find time to mow.
After going through countless gas-powered weedwhackers, I finally broke down and bought an EGO ST1502SF 56 volt cordless one.
It’s by far the best one I’ve ever used. As powerful as any of my gas ones, decent runtime (20 minutes or so), quiet, and easy to handle. I use Echo Black Diamond trimmer line with it.
I grew up on a farm and everything we had was gas-powered. It wasn’t until I rented a house with a yard that I realized pretty much everything we had that ran on gas was also available in electric.
I know nothing about battery technology but I have heard that it’s improved dramatically over the past 20 years or so and that has played a big part in improving the power, longevity, and reliability of battery powered tools. Thus things like battery-powered string trimmers and leaf blowers have become ubiquitous. There are a few things that personally I’d choose to continue to use the gasoline-powered versions over their electric counterparts: chainsaws, lawn mowers, and pressure washers primarily.
Perhaps it’s my age or perhaps it’s because I haven’t shopped for yard tools in several years but I am rather surprised that battery-powered pressure washers, rototillers, and snow blowers actually exist. However, I’m the biggest surprise is that battery-powered riding lawn mowers exist as well.
I have a Black & Decker cordless electric mower that’s outlasted two gas mowers (carburetor issues due to ethanol in the gas, gah) and it’s amazing. No cord, pretty powerful, can do both front and back yard on one charge, charges fairly quickly and best of all that first time in spring–it starts right up, which NO gas mower I’ve ever had did. It’s very quiet, too. Been using it over five years now and I’m not wasting my money on another gas mower until I need something that’s basically a tractor.
Curious how long your gas mowers lasted since your five year battery one outlasted them. I have had 2 gas mowers in my life, treat them hard and put them away wet, and each has lasted over 10 years. One started right up (1 - 2 pulls) every year every time except one which I just forgot to hold the safety and flooded it for the first start of a season, the other older mower would take perhaps 5 - 10 pulls and some pumps of the primer before starting for the season, started up fine for the season after that. Yes ethanol, though sometimes I get ethanol free premium (but have to travel for it so don’t always), and I also use gas stabilizer, and some times add carb cleaner to the tank, though many times I run gas that should be stale.
No electric mower would compete in terms of power, and also be self propelled (walk behind), but looking at the electric ones they seem also to all have a plastic deck, I can’t see that lasting 10 years, I look at the inside of my mowers deck and over the years it has taken some impacts which metal is better of handling.
Also how long is a battery expected to last?
Perhaps for light mowing a well manicured lawn battery electric would be good, but for weeds, roots and rocks, hills and ruts, and just to get the job when the lawn should have been mowed 2 weeks ago done I can’t see electric yet competing with gas. Even plug in electric, I suspect would need something like 50A 220V to compete on power.
You also need to break up electric into corded vs battery.
I find the 2 biggest advantages to electric over gas are weight and sound level.
The biggest advantages of gas over electric are mobility (no dragging a cord around), higher power, and ease of refilling/recharging.
For a while, I had a battery/electric mower. I was willing to mow my lawn early in the morning or late at night, because that thing was so quiet. But the battery wouldn’t handle cutting my whole lawn on one charge, so I had to mow the front one day and the back the next. In addition, it had trouble with wet grass.
Older gas mowers tend to be freaking tanks that last forever but the new ones (mostly with Briggs & Stratton motors that used to be awesome but now are apparently put together with string and glue) seem to have an intractable problem with ethanol gas. I had one for about three years and it did okay until a combination of wheels wanting to fall off all of a sudden and a froze up carburetor sidelined it. An estimate of repair was actually more than just buying a new one, so I did. It has maybe three HOURS of use on the motor, then winter came and I ran it completely out of gas (which is how I’ve been wintering gas mowers for decades) and in spring it simply would not start because the fucking carb was pasted shut with shellacked ethanol gas. At that point I just threw up my hands and gave up on the damned things.
The electric mows my back yard which is a challenge. I don’t like lawn monoculture much so the yard is more of a barely contained meadow, with seasonal plants of about a million different kinds–big scary rye grasses that grow chest high if you let 'em (I think those came in on some straw bales I used to get for dog bedding when I had an outdoor Malemute who wouldn’t come in the house for more than five minutes) and chickweed and herb robert and deadnettle and dandelions and gnarly dock plants and fucking blackberry invaders from hell and the like. Add to that two dogs who dig random holes here and there, hide toys and sticks in the underbrush for the mower to find and just some very challenging terrain–the electric handles it like a brush mower. Thing is awesome. I have no idea what the battery life is supposed to be but I’ve always been able to mow the back, front and side yards on one charge and it still does to this day.
I just basically have no luck with gas appliances and all the luck with electric ones, I guess.
Yeah. For me the main issue is economics, corded yard appliances seem anywhere from 2-5x cheaper than internal combustion ones. A gas powered weed whacker is $200 but a corded electric one is $30-50. Electric leaf blowers start at $15.
However I don’t see a lot of electric outdoor appliances used by the neighbors where I’m at. I didn’t know if that was because they are lower quality or what. Most yards in this area are a quarter acre or smaller, so an extension cord that is 150’ will be sufficient to get to every part of the yard. I don’t see the appeal of a gas appliance due to noise and cost. I figured I was missing something.
We mow and trim several acres. Our lawn tractor is gas (diesel) but we have gradually gone to battery weedwhackers, blowers, trim mowers, and even chainsaws.
Batteries have come a long way. Last weekend I used our 16 inch bar chainsaw to take down some small trees and trim some others. I ran out of gas before the chainsaw ran out of battery.
Two years is what I keep reading as far as pessimistic outlook on how long a battery will last, but it’s really more a question of how many charge/discharge cycles. New batteries aren’t cheap.
I got a battery-powered Ryobi string trimmer and hedge clipper for a screaming deal a couple years ago. Was a bit leery, but I couldn’t be more pleased. Plenty of power, sturdy, and batteries charge quick.
Also a couple years ago I had a big line e come down, maybe 12’ diameter. I got tired of trying to start my gas chainsaw that only got used once or twice a year, so I got an electric one. Easily handled that limb, and more at least that large.
