Getting round to that time of year again for battle to recommence with the lawn. Now my faithful Hayter rotary job has served reasonably well in the past[1], its 14" cut made short work of my previous lawn, and at worst would required three emptying sessions to do all the lawn.
Alas I think it may have met its match with the new lawn(s). Total area of grass is probably something like three quarters of an acre - mostly flat although bumpy in places, and some dodging among the trees. The prospect of pushing the beastie back and forth is not too bad[2], but I expect the 50 odd trips to empty the blighter might get tedious very quickly.
Hence what would you recommend? Are we into "sit on" mower territory here or would that be overkill? (not that I have any objection to overkill if it does the job well and quickly ;-))
[1] Once I worked out how to rig its auto adjusting throttle to run the machine a little faster so as to create enough airflow through it to not clog with cuttings every 10 yards!
[2] Although note I have note tried it yet!
Hmm. I reckon our lawn takes an hour with a 21" rotary. At walking pace that is around 4 miles. Nothing like 3/4 acre either!
After breaking various bones last year, I opted for a ride on. I ended up with a 36" double deck Jonsered (now Huskvarna I believe so there may be some deals about)
Finish is OK: stripes even! Cutting while cornering tends to overtrim on the outside. You still need your old mower to do the edges and tricky bits. The wider deck grounds readily on banks and bumps despite the jockey wheels which are intended to avoid this. Fuel consumption is around twice the old rotary. Not all ride on mowers have decks suitable for mulching. Electric start and headlights should you want to chase rabbits.
Price. I paid 1500ukp + VAT new. I was tempted by a 6 year old John Deere at a similar price.
Watch security aspects. These things are very attractive to the asset re-locators. You can purchase bolt down front wheel clamps for around
100ukp or DIY
If you look at the American sites you will find folk burbling on about their yards etc.
I don't cut as much as that but I wouldn't be without a sit-on. Some are rather better than others at gathering up the grass cuttings so if you don't want to just leave them lying around make it very clear to the dealer (or whoever) that you won't find a machine that only collects dry cuttings acceptable. My previous machine, a 10hp Murray, was like that (the Merkins tend to have dustbowls for lawns I believe) but in some other ways it was nicer than my current 12hp Lawnflite.
Ive got 1.5acres, and am currently running a 48" John Deere. It takes a lot of punishment and it gets it. I would say a 36" is all you need for
3/4 acre..depends on how sharp your corners are.
All lawnmowers are basically s**te. The John Deere is pretty tough, which I need, and had lights on, till the apple tree knocked em onto the exhaust pipe..and a pretty tough deck, that instead of bending when it hits trees, simply ripped out its mounting brackets and needed welding after a year..teh grass coll;ectort is a joke. Its supposed to use fan powerto blw the cuttings into a hopper, but unless its ultar fine and pretty dry it clogs almost immediately. so I use a mulching deck mostly. That clogs on first cuts of the 'meadow bit tho, so that is run just dumping huge streams of hay out the side..
If grass collection is an issue, get a machine that has a power brush that sweeps the stuff into a bin.
Some types have the cutting deck in the front: these are useful in that they can be run closer to some things.
It recirculates the grass cuttings inside the deck till they are very small, and fall through the grass that's left, and riot away very quickly. So no need to collect the grass cuttings. It almost works quite well.
Headlights are useful as cutting a large area takes a heck of a long time. I tend to spend nearly a day on it. If thats NOT Saturday or Sunday, it might be a late evening mid week
That may not be enough. I lost my westw3ood via thieves who drove across a 10 acre field,and lifted it over a hedge..after forcing the shed door.
"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@proxy00.news.clara.net...
Yup.
Considering that you are paying about half the price of a new small car for even a mid-range ride-on, the standards of their design and build are appalling. Budget for a MIG welder and a set of obstruction spanners with any of them.
I have a Hayter ride-on, which is a re-badged Westwood/Countax. The flimsy "toy car" bonnet has to be removed for anything more advanced than checking the oil, and it's a b* to get back on, so I left it off all last year. Fine, but that makes it even noisier, and there is an uncovered rotating fan. The deck is so awkward to remove that you finish up either leaving it to fill up with its clag of mulched grass, frogs, and fox turds, or you scrape your wrists and forearms while you fill your fingernails with the stuff to remove it. The electromagnetic clutch to engage the cutters works fine on mine when the mower is cold, but won't re-engage when it's hot, so I try to do the whole lawn without disengaging it - which means staying on the seat, as there's an interlock.
I thought the hydraulic transmission would be an advantage, but it isn't. The speed control is so coarse that I still find myself using the "clutch" (which just lets the drive belt slip on its pulleys) to manoeuvre. A tractor-style "choose the gear then work in it" approach would be just as good, smoother, and less of a maintenance liability, especially if combined with a real clutch.
Mine has a power brush. I can certainly believe it's better than the wild optimism of those side-discharge machines that expect the grass cuttings to instinctively migrate 5ft up a narrow, sloping tube, or even than those which give it a straighter path, but trouble-free it ain't. The collector looks huge, but it only fills to perhaps 40% before the cuttings start tumbling back out behind the brushes, so I reckon on having to empty it every 100-150 yards of mowing, assuming reasonable growing conditions and once-a-week mowing. You can empty it by reversing up to your chosen area, twisting round in your seat, and heaving on a telescopic handle, but it discharges at a very low level - so no neat heaps of grass cuttings - and a slightly-built person (which no-one could accuse me of being), or one with any back problems, would find it very awkward. Damp grass builds up on a badly-positioned lip at the entrance to the collection bin, and to clean this area you either have to disengage the drive to the cutters and the brushes, get off, and reach into the collector, or carry a suitable stick that you can poke through the once-transparent inspection hatch, which promptly falls off because it has such crude hinges. It cuts long grass fine, but the brushes then clog immediately. You learn to listen for the changed note as their drive belts slip, unless you smell the burning rubber first.
Apart from that, it's great. Well, it's better than using even a self-propelled electric start conventional mower, particularly if you'd sooner spend 3 extra hours repairing the mower than two hours using the damned thing.
As used by local authorities and the like: always worth noting what professionals use, and they don't use garishly-painted plastic toys designed to attract the little boy lurking in most men.
I presume it is because the discharge is rearwards direct into the collector. The other option is a side discharge that requires a convoluted tube to fill the collector.
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so like my Lawnflite 603 that I initially thought the illustration was a mistake.
(I didn't realise that Screwfix did lawnmowers but that one is so new it isn't yet in the catalogue).
The rear collector on my Lawnflite 603 (5 years old and recently bought
2nd hand as it happens) is much much better than the side collector on the previous Murray for the primary purpose of collecting grass cuttings. It does however clog very quickly if the target is dead leaves.
My first ride-on had a large rotating brush. I found it cumbersome. It was a Westwood I think but that went so long ago that all the details have faded from my mind.
As others have said watch out for thieves.
My first one was stolen by thieves who broke open the garage doors on my barn while I was at work. The thieves were back 6 months later to collect the replacement and the additional padlock on the yard gate didn't deter them in the least. They were the reason why I now have a burglar alarm. Pure coincidence of course that at the time of both thefts there were travellers encamped in a layby at the bottom of the hill.
If ultimate finish isnt too important and you are able to mow pretty regularly- go for a mulching deck, whether it be walk behind or ride on, and plenty of HP!
Have you thought about what you would do with the volume of grass if you do collect it? I had an acre garden at my last place and ended up switching to a mulching mower just so I didn't have to deal with enormous piles of clippings.
Saves emptying the grass collector. Downside is that your wife may not care to have small bits of greenery walked into the house. Agriculturally speaking, you are carting off fertility which may need to be replaced to retain good growing conditions for grass. Weeds love it as they can survive in less fertile conditions. A compromise may be to collect and cart off the cuttings near the house and mulch the rest.
The Jonsered has a big plastic gismo which fits down the grass collecting chute and retains the cuttings on the deck where they get chimbled up and lost.
Hmm again. Mine attracted some gentlemen with bolt croppers and a large van. Storage, they are rather large and may need 1/4 of a normal garage.
must have shorted out the interlock(s). Mine won't run in gear with the blades engaged unless there's someone sitting on it.)
My ride-on had about 35 stickers on it warning that there were hot, sharp, rotating things within and the manual could be reduced from 40 pages to a single sheet of A4 if all the warnings about hot, sharp, rotating things were removed.
It's a 10hp, 30", side exit Murray, built to engineering standards that would have had Brunel expire from apoplexy. It won't pick the grass up if it's even slightly wet or long. I've rebuilt the steering a couple of times (the comment earlier about needing a welder are too true), made a new grass pickup tube and it needed an engine rebuild last year after 15 years service (the con rod broke
- we don't really know why). I've had to fill the tyres with "slime" because it reliably picks up quickthorn thorns from stray hedge trimmings (I got pretty adept at putting the tyres back on the rims, too) and until I bought a battery conditioner for it, it got through a battery a year, too. The brakes are inside the transaxle, effectively irrepairable and packed up within a year or two. Altogether, it's a right PITA. And it was £1500, 15 years ago. But second hand ones, "as seen", without warranty were 8 and 900 pounds!
I'm nothing like as keen on grass as I used to be. I have the best part of an acre.
I don't think it was a ride-on it sounds like a gang mower from the description, since it refers to "a tractor driven mower" and says "he became caught under the three sets of blades."
My tractor has a hand throttle and it's perfectly possible to set it running at a steady speed and if I were stupid enough to dismount it would simply run on by itself with the PTO powering the mower.
Since Bradford Council started collecting vegetable matter for composting I have been putting some of mine out for them in the large canvas bags provided*. A single session will fill 4 of the bags but unfortunately although I cut my grass weekly at the height of the growing season the council only collect every 4 weeks.
The remainder I just tip over a wall and forget about as I don't have anything much to mix it with to get it to rot into compost.
*I think I now have 6 of of the bags, having collected another 2 over the winter. The council only provided the first one. All the others have come courtesy of the wind. Being downwind of general habitation has its disadvantages with reference to rubbish blowing in the breeze but there are occasional advantages as well. :-) So far at least when I have put out 4 bags all four have been emptied. I sometimes wonder how many I will get to before someone spoils the party.
I picked a John Deere this time because it was the best of a bad lot. Its not bad to access, and it cuts well enough. The power transmission is pretty smooth, its some sort of infinitely variable hydrospastic thing.
The grass collection is a joke. It uses the blades to genearate a draught, and it is not enough. I had a brush machine before and that wasn't bad. Nevertheless for a good result I would always cut twice to get the last of the escaped cuttings off. With the mulcher on it cuts well enough up to about 1.5"..more than that you need to simply spew the cuttings out the side, leave em a week or two and then go over with the mulcher on.
If you want a real LAWN use a pro cylinder mower. Lawn tractors can turn meadows into paddocks, but they cant turn them into bowling greens. Mulching is the answer unless you WANT to collect dead leaves and grass cuttings for composting.
My attitude to the mower is simple: The last one was almost smashed to pieces before it got stolen, and the amortized cost of it over that period was about what it would have cost to get it regularly serviced. I.e. any more than a routine oil change is contra indicated. Every year I pull the deck off after week three, and regrind last years blades and fit them, bend everything straight and reset the cutting deck more or less level, pump up the tyres and thats it. And replace all the broken bits like the popped off headlights and so on.
The main belt lasts a few years only.
I do recommend the smaller John Deeres as fairly well made and easy to access. But the grass collector doesn't work at all. Get a separate something to suck up clippings and leaves. I also swear by Briggs and Strattons. They have always been lucky for me.
If you have any sort of thorns, remove all wheels, and tyre valves and inject with anti-puncture goop. That has reduced puncture issues from one every ten minutes to about one a year, and that's mostly catered for with a Halfords 12v car tyre inflator.Those last about two years too.
Having said that just hammer teh shit out of them, and keep em going till they drop. The JD can just about take it. The Westwood I had could not.
In laws have a Husqvarna..not too bad and a Toro, again, not too bad. All have suffered from smashed decks and deck mountings, worn and broken v belts, and in some case bent suspension and steering stuff. In almost all cases the engines have soldiered on tho the Toro had a weird carb problem last year.
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