In search of a mower
Posted on July 13th, 2008 – 8:57 PMBy Jason Hammond
With our grass now coming in at full capacity, it appears that we are in need of a new lawn mower. We own a manual, reel style, push mower, that we used at our last house to cut the relatively small front yard (but the size of our new lawn and the time it would take will not make this a realistic option) We have sworn ourselves off the use of a traditional gas powered mower (based on their incredibly polluting nature), which means we need to settle on some sort of electric mower. I’ve never owned one before, although I remember years ago seeing a friend’s parent mowing their lawn tethered to the house by a long extension cord. Although I am finding there are now a lot of options when it comes to electric mowers both those that require corded operation and those that run on a battery I am struggling to determine which one is best for us.
From what I understand reel style mowers actually provide the healthiest style cut for your lawn and there appear to be a couple mowers that offer this option. the SunLawn EM-2 model (a cordless option) got high reviews from Wired Magazine and weighs in at roughly 39 lbs. one of the lightest mowers I could find that wasn’t powered soley by my legs. Unfortunately, for me one the drawbacks to the Sunlawn is its rather “Wally and the Beav” design, which reminds me of something that you might find at the back of your grandparents storage shed—not horrible looking but certainly not really very nice looking either. The other option for reel mowers that caught my eye, is the Brill ASM380 Reel Mower (another cordless option) with a more updated design style, and a remarkably light weight of only 29lbs. However, as I dug deeper in my search the ASM380 model has been discontinued by the manufacturer with the release of an new mower in June of 2008. The German Engineer, Brill mower can actually be operated as a traditional push mower if the battery were to run out, before the lawn was completed. Since it’s recommended for a lawn of about 2,500 sq. ft. or less this push mower feature might actually come in handy.
The other option in electric mowers, is the more common rotary style cutting system. The apparent darling of this category is the Nuetron Electric Mower. with it’s stylish fresh green exterior making it appealing to look at. Plus, it features a wonderful little features like a push button start (with safety key), relatively long run time of 45-60 minutes and boast being the most powerful battery powered mower you can buy (360 watt-hours of battery energy.) Its draw backs, in this case are its rotary blade and weight of 69lbs. Another one of the rotary options is the Desa® Remington® Electric Mower, which boasts being the first and only 60 volt battery mower with 60 minutes of run time and corded option. The design of the Remington looks a bit more like a traditional gas mower, nothing really “wowing” here but not bad looking either. The great feature of this mower (in my opinion) is the option to either run it from the battery or as a corded model. I can imagine that there may be a few times that I might forget to plug it in before my next use or run out of juice before I get the lawn completed so this would be a great little feature.
I’ve tried to read a few online reviews as well as pick up on what users are saying in various forums, but the feedback seems to be greatly varied. People either totally love whichever model they have, or they completely loath it. All of them claim to cut tall grass and give a long run time but at the same time, without first-hand experience, I can’t separate marketing hype from manufacturing performance. What I’d really like to do is line the various models up across my front yard and test them side-by-side, to see which is best for me. Since that is not so likely to happen, I’m asking if anyone out there can share with me their first hand experience with their electric mower.
The Sunlawn EM2
The Brill ASM380
The Nuetron Electric Mower
Desa Remington Electric Mower
12 Responses to "In search of a mower"
Interesting post… I’ve been catching up with this blog and its all been very interesting, even if for a resource standpoint.
I wish there was a way to look at all old posts by month like on a regular blog…
I’m not sure of the data, but are the emissions (environmental and noise) of a traditional gas mower worse than what you will surely have to do with the battery in that electric mower?
I say keep it simple. As far as basing your decision on the way a mower looks, are you cutting your lawn for you or your neighbors? Do you really think the other three mowers look all that different than the first one? How big is your lawn, how long would it take to cut with a reel style? One could say that if you use the mower with the most benefit to your lawn, you wouldnt potentially need to use additives.
Thanks again for the reading, i look forward to it every time.
Hi Jason,
Good luck finding a mower. For environmental reasons I started out with a push-reel mower but finally gave in and bought a gas powered walk behind. It wasn’t the effort I minded so much as the result. From my experience, it seems to me that push reel mowers have three big drawbacks: first, they don’t chop the clippings fine enough to leave on the lawn for mulching. This means raking or collecting the clippings and composting them separately. But more importantly, not leaving the clippings behind removes nutrients that have to be resupplied, most likely from a bag of Scotts fertilizer, and also may expose the roots to more dry out, necessitating more watering. Second, push reel mowers don’t mow certain weeds very well. When I was shopping for a mower I had a new lawn from seed, and we grew a fair amount of tall stalked switch grass, which the push reel mower just bent over and couldn’t cut. So even after mowing the grass still looked like crap. Maybe with your sodded lawn this won’t be an issue. Third, I use my power mower to suck up leaves and twigs in the fall, which I then put onto the compost heap. You can collect leaves with a rake, but unchopped leaves take up a lot more space than chopped, and risk blowing off the pile. For these reasons I reluctantly concluded that a rotary mower was more versatile.
As for electric mowers, they seem to be ok for mowing but underpowered for chopping or mulching. Most corded electric mowers seem to be around 12 amps, which translates into 1300 watts, or about 2 hp. Battery powered mowers are likely to be significantly weaker. This compares to 5-7 hp for a gas mower. Cost of power for each machine is generally not an issue. I mow my ca. 2000 sf lawn about 30 times per year and use about 3 gallons of gas total, or about $12 these days. A corded electric is cheaper, probably consuming about 15-30 kwh per season, which at 10-20 cents per kwh works out to between 2 and 6 bucks.
So the real concern is air pollution. Old style two-strokes are dirty (I use a corded electric weed wacker for this reason, and don’t own a blower), but 4-stroke OHC mowers that meet CARB Tier III standards are significantly cleaner. You don’t seem to have that big a lawn, and I wonder whether the pollution savings is going to be significant. It seems that if you avoid 2 stroke motors that the pollution from the mower is going to be minimal. But maybe I’m wrong.
Anyway, good luck with your search. Let us know all the lawn equipment you end up getting!
hi jason!
a friend of mine has the neutron and loves it. it’s so quiet it’s almost unbelievable.
cheers,
matt
Thanks Matt,
It’s funny I’ve read good and bad things about electric mowers so it’s nice to hear something confirmed from someone like yourself.
Jason
Hi Dan,
I know that the batteries are bad but my understanding is that gas mowers are one of the single worst pollutants.The average mower. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, 7% of all summertime emissions of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are produced by lawn and garden equipment and the average 3.5-horsepower gas lawn mower, can emit the same amount of pollutants in one hour as a new car driven 340 miles.
I like the real style mowers and we own one of these from our last house, but I tried cutting the lawn a bit with it here. However, the thickness of our lawn and size of it would make this a good 4 hour project, easily.
Jason
Jason,
We have had the Neutron mower for about 2 years and love it. Our last yard had a steep hill in the front yard and I was unable to push a regular gas mower up the hill and always left the hill for my husband to tackle. The neutron is so much lighter than the gas mower that I was able to push it up the hill and get the job done myself (to my husband’s delight). It does cut a smaller swath of grass, so it takes a bit more walking, but it’s quiet and does a great job. I seem to recall seeing an article that mentioned that there is a newer Neutron model that is wider? If you have a big yard, just make sure you can get it done with one charging- otherwise you might not be happy with it. For smaller yards, it’s perfect. I’d highly recommend it.
Roxanne
Hi Jason,
Thank you for sharing the adventure of your beautiful house with us readers.
Do NOT get a gas mower! They epitomize suburban disregard for the natural environment. Unless you are physically disabled, if you need a gas mower, then your lawn is too large. Stick with the reel mower as much as you can– productive exercise, quiet, safe around kids and pets, and you get to know your lawn and garden very well. For those times when you can’t do a good job with the reel — when grass is too wet, or you let it get too long, or at certain times of the year when some grasses and weeds get tough to mow — then use a battery mower.
I have managed a couple of rather large lawns this way (though now I’m building in the woods where I hope to have nothing as unnatural as grass lawn).
My favorite reel mower is the Scotts, because it cuts a very wide swath. My favorite battery mower is the Neuton. The battery performs even better than promised — I usually get more than an hour from a charge. And the machine is tough enough to cut down tall grasses and the tough weeds I couldn’t always cut with the reel mower. It is quiet, no vibrations, takes NO maintenance. The only downside to my Neuton was that it had a narrow deck, but the newer models are wider and even more powerful. I mostly used the mulching blade.
BTW, I believe Todd is quite wrong about clippings with a reel mower. I always leave my clippings, whether with the reel or the Neuton, and they always mulched well and I never feed my lawn any chemicals other than lime, when the pH level gets out of whack.
Please don’t despoil the environment surrounding your one-of-a-kind home with gas mower roaring on the lawn!
Heather
Maybe you just need a better kind of manual mower. Check out this one I stumbled across today.
I’ve also seen battery powered mowers that mow your lawn automatically just like the automatic vacuum cleaners that ricochet around your living room on their own until it is clean. I can’t find the link now but they have their own charging station and can be custom programmed based on the size of your yard and hours of the day you want them buzzing around.
Thanks Chad,
I actually mowed last night with my manual mower. our front yard took about 1hr 45mins to complete, but the biggest issue is that it knocks down so much of the grass and so it looks a bit ratty.
Thanks for the link to the eco-friendly mower, I don’t know if a bikemower would work with some of the slopes in my front yard but it would certainly be fun to try I’ve also seen those auto mowers too, I wonder exactly how they work I get how the vacuums work but there isn’t really anything to ricochet off of in our yard.
Jason
Jason
Jason,
We’ve had our Neuton lawn mower for a couple of years and love it. It’s much lighter than your typical gas powered mower. Much to my husband’s delight, I was finally able to mow the steep hill in front of our old home once we had this mower. It does cut a smaller swath of grass than what people are used to, so you have to take a few more rounds of the lawn. I think I read about a new model of the Neuton that is a bit wider- it might be the one you have pictured because it looks a bit different from ours.
I would just make sure that you can mow the entire yard on one battery charge- otherwise, it’s not too convenient to wait for recharging (but you can always get a 2nd battery). The battery does wear down more quickly when you have really thick, long grass. I highly recommend this mower- it’s quiet, light and does a great job cutting.
Roxanne
Roxanne,
Thanks for the feedback. I haven’t asked for a ton of reader help on my journey but this has been very insightful.
Jason
Heather,
No worries, a gas lawn mower is not even on the radar for consideration. I’ve owned one in the past but tried to use our reel manual mower for most of our mowing. I used it last night to mow a portion of our front yard (the results were so, so) but the biggest issue was it look me so long to cut the really thick lawn we have and I don’t have a ton of hours to spend doing so, so I’d like to get an electric mower to speed the process a bit and give me a nice cut. I also agree that native planting lawn would be nice but I do have young boys and want them to enjoy playing on their lawn as well We plan to mix in a some native plants along the pond edge, in the rain gardens and back in some the wooded areas as well.
Thanks for your great feedback on the mower. I have two other posts I have planned to write but I didn’t want to distract from all this great conversation around the mower.
Jason
