Electric ride-on mower

[Bruce Tuncks]

Now that we are settling in permanently on the farm here, the wife wants a new ride-on mower. I am suggesting she gets a battery-electric one so that I won't have to start the thing all the time.  Am I being reasonable?

[nomadpete]

I really liked the battery ride on mower at Bunnings. It looked better built than the average petrol powered ones. A bit exy though.

[old man emu]

1 hour ago, Bruce Tuncks said:

Now that we are settling in permanently on the farm here, the wife wants a new ride-on mower

[Marty_d]

1 hour ago, Bruce Tuncks said:

Now that we are settling in permanently on the farm here, the wife wants a new ride-on mower. I am suggesting she gets a battery-electric one so that I won't have to start the thing all the time.  Am I being reasonable?

I thought ride ons have electric start.  Ours does.  Sits there for half a year and still starts pretty easily.

[onetrack]

I thought putting batteries under horses saddles was illegal?

[nomadpete]

9 hours ago, old man emu said:

Don't do it!

That model of ride on mower has outrageous operating costs!

 

And they miss some kinds of grass

Edited October 12, 2021 by nomadpete
No reason

[Fliteright]

You’d wanna have a loooooong power lead😉

[nomadpete]

The big boofy electric ride on that I was looking at, had a claimed run time of two hours for normal grass. No long lead needed.

[spacesailor]

Has it got a trailer, with a Forklift battery on it. ?.

spacesailor

[facthunter]

You don't want mowers too heavy or you will compact the ground.. My wife's zero turn has a sweet Vee motor 25 Hp that is frugal on fuel. Nut  grass needs good power to cut it. Nev

[Old Koreelah]

The adoption of electric motors will change the sounds of our lives. Just came in from enjoying the late afternoon stillness. My lifetime has co-incided with the widespread use of noisy IC engines on the land, from stationary pump engines to noisy tractors. These will fade away and rural life will return to the quiet enjoyed by our grandparents- except for bluddy cockatoos.

[nomadpete]

Nah, OK, not yet. My daily serenity is shattered by a big diesel powered pencil sharpener on the next hill. For the past month the Forestry Department has been harvesting trees. No chance of them finding a quiet technological solution for their job anytime soon.

[willedoo]

This is my lawn mower. She hasn't missed a beat in almost 19 years.

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

…and probably produced lots of little lawnmowers during that working life!

[spacesailor]

Battery power !?

Even my smart watch needs charging morning  & night, 20 hour run.

Yet the Old perpetual watch, ' charges ' while worn.

Is inovation going backwards. & using more resorcess than ever.

E V  need a mains supply point for refueling. I have seen a picture of a ' diesel' ute, towing a trailor, with a 'petrol 'generator,.

Just to refuel a ' battery electric ' vehicle.

spacesailor

 

[Yenn]

Will it be that much quieter with electric power. A lot of the noise we hear is not from the IC engine, but from the machinery itself. For instance a lot of mowers have blowers which make terrible noise and cars and trucks make more nose from the tyres than from the exhaust. I would really like to have electric motorbikes, but then I reckon the owners would equip them with noise makers just to annoy me.

[willedoo]

11 hours ago, Old Koreelah said:

…and probably produced lots of little lawnmowers during that working life!

Poor old girl has never had a calf. She's never been AI'd or even seen a bull. Her last companion, a young steer, died about six years ago so she's been on her own since then. Like most animals, they like the company of their own, but she seems to have adapted and probably thinks I'm another cow.

 

I've heard it said that female cows, dogs etc. can go a bit funny if they don't have offspring, but this one seems unaffected as far as I can tell.

[willedoo]

One of the best things I've ever bought is an electric chainsaw. It's a cheap $99 Ozito from Bunnings. No battery, you have to run leads out. I was dubious about it at first but am amazed at it's capabilities and the amount of work it's done. It's only a 14" bar with a 1200w motor, but as long as the chain is sharp you are only limited by the bar length. I've cut old dry stumps 3' diameter with ease and felling large trees would be no problem as long as you can get the bar in enough to do it. The hardest of cutting doesn't seem to load the engine at all. It's got as much grunt as my $2,000 petrol Husky.

 

For any work where it's practical to run a few leads out, I don't even consider my petrol saws now.

[old man emu]

12 hours ago, spacesailor said:

Battery power !?

Even my smart watch needs charging morning  & night, 20 hour run.

Yet the Old perpetual watch, ' charges ' while worn.

Reminds me of the teenaged boy who got one of those watches that wound its spring the when the hand moved.

 

Overwound the spring in three months.

[Dax]

On 14/10/2021 at 1:45 PM, willedoo said:

One of the best things I've ever bought is an electric chainsaw.

I have two, one an Ozito plug in and a cheap battery powered one of ebay. The ozito works well with it's 12inch blade, but the battery one is simply amazing, with what it will cut and i use that for cutting up wood at the house, especially knotted wood which refuses to split. Been looking at a Makita 16inch battery chainsaw, but it's $700 just for the body and have to buy the batteries. Not ready to do that yet and already have a heap of battery powered Makita tools and only 2 batteries, hopefully the prices of batteries will come down over time.

 

Those electric ride on mowers are sure expensive, I have horses, or should say one horse now, which takes care of the grass and provides excellent manure for the gardens.

[spacesailor]

Horses !.

Over grazing of the paddock leaves an Awful weed problem.

Chemical weed killer by the gallon, burning,

Then plowing the whole dam thing, to sow new grass, just for the dam thing to start all over again.

Daughter had five !.

But

Only one was her,s, the rest neglected bags of bones, she was asked to look after.

SES volunteers have fun.

spacesailor

 

[Yenn]

Bttery chainsaws are the way to go. My old Stihl O-240 hardly gets used now that I have a Stihl 32V battery saw. So much lighter and quieter, both things an old bloke wants. When the battery goes flat i have to have a rest. With the old saw I would refill and carry on.

[Dax]

1 hour ago, spacesailor said:

Horses !.

Over grazing of the paddock leaves an Awful weed problem.

Chemical weed killer by the gallon, burning,

Then plowing the whole dam thing, to sow new grass, just for the dam thing to start all over again.

Daughter had five !.

Over grazing only happens when animals are restricted to one paddock and weeds only arrive when you bring in fodder from outside the property. Have never used weed killers or any chemicals on my land, it's all worked and looked after naturally and we have more grass than we had over 20 years ago. This property was an old d quarry, so consisted of one paddock of reasonable grass and the rest grey sandy soil, a few old trees and 3 dams. Now it's covered in grass, has about 5ha of bush and the rest natural grasses. To get rid of weeds all you have to do is slash them over and over and they go away, plus slashing them before seeding means you are providing your ground with nutrients.

 

I separated the grazing areas into 5 paddocks, spread going to seed hay around the barren ones and kept doing that for a few years until they became heavily grassed areas. Added some lime to help deter the bracken and that was it.

[Dax]

40 minutes ago, Yenn said:

Bttery chainsaws are the way to go.

Very true, but they are yet to be capable of cutting down a decent size tree in my opinion, I use my 21inch or 16inch husky for big trees and hate the noise. Tried with my 48v ebay chainsaw and it couldn't cope once it got well into the trunk kept cutting out and when you're cutting down a big tree, the last thing you want is for your chainsaw to stop half way through. Happened to me once when didn't check the fuel level before starting and it left the tree hanging by a thread upright and had to go and get the fuel, not knowing if it would fall or not and which way. Very unnerving and won't let it happen again.

[onetrack]

I've got a self-propelled, walk-behind Honda HRU-214, a 21 inch cut model that I bought in 1992. It's exactly the same as the one in the Reddit thread below, and it still works perfectly. The old Hondas are built to last forever.

 

But SWMBO doesn't like it, because she reckons it's too heavy for her, and she hates pulling on start ropes - she's got arthritis, and it hurts her hands, pulling start ropes. So she bought a little Ozito electric cheapie off eBay.

 

I think it cost her about $190 about 12-15 mths ago, but there's nothing to it, a plastic housing and a motor and blades. It's got a 300mm cut, and she loves it. It only weighs about 9kgs.

 

We've only got 3 small areas of lawn around the house, so it suits the areas we've got. It came complete with battery and charger, and it looks like she got a good deal, they're about $280 now.

 

But she didn't realise the raise and lower mechanism is only stiff springs holding the axles in various slots. You have to grip and squeeze the axles to pull them out of the slot, to move them to the next slot.

 

That takes a bit of doing, and she can't do it, because she lacks hand grip strength, so she gets me to do it for her! Regardless, I'm quite surprised at the ability of the little beast, even the relatively small battery gives about 1/2 an hr of mowing time.

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyItForLife/comments/d9so2f/1983_honda_hr214_36_year_old_lawn_mower_still/