Congrats on the new house.After living in apartments/condos for our entire adult lives, the wife & I are taking a plunge into homeownership later this year. It's a fairly big lot for our area (1/2 acre) with a long driveway and a sidewalk, but still a big backyard and decent-sized front yard.
I'm just brainstorming of what sort of yard care equipment & accessories we will need to take care of the thing. I would like to try and take care of it ourselves, and would prefer a self-propelled push mower over a riding mower. I cut grass as a kid, & feel like between me and bribing the kids, the actual yard shouldn't be too much work for now anyway. There are a couple areas with shrubs & some flowers that we're going to ignore for now and figure out next year.
Electric would be nice, though I'm concerned about long-term battery life. I know there are some brands that have batteries that are interchangeable with other lawn care equipment (trimmers, etc).
Any suggestions for must-haves, aside from the mower itself? And any brand recommendations, especially for electric mowers & for brands with interchangeable battery between different equipment?
Thanks!
I hope this doesn't come across as dismissive, but your lot size may be stretching what a push mower or you could handle. 0.5 acres less building structure and driveway can easily be 0.4 acres that needs mowing. Speaking from experience, 0.3 acres may just be the full extent of what a 7.5 Ah battery could do, and one really should be looking at getting 10 Ah worth of energy. When we rented a SFH on 0.20 acres, the lawn was 0.15 acres, and that took a good 35 minutes. I'd imagine 0.4 acres to easily double the time needed. Then you still need to trim.
If I were in your shoes and were to find someone willing to mow ~0.4 acres for $55, I'd gladly contract it out. For reference, the fees for the 0.15 acres at our old rental is an eye-watering $45 five years ago, b/c it was too small for a riding mower. My current house probably has 0.30 acres, and the fee to is $45-$55, all b/c the mower can use a riding mower to get through everything.
The other thing is snow, and presuming your new house is in the Chicago area, you may be looking at two snow blowers. A single-stage for regular snow and a dual-stage that can break up ice. I have the former, and it just about handles most of the snow events, but occasionally during some events, the plow trucks will just pile ~2 ft high of ice (after 1 ft of snow) against the driveway, and there's very little the machine could do about it. I'm looking to pick up a used dual-stage.
Statistics: Posted by InvisibleAerobar — Thu Jun 13, 2024 6:32 pm
